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THE QUAKER 



A Study in Costume 



BY 

AMELIA MOTT GUMMERE 



" Chuse thy Cloaths by thine own eye, 
not anothers. The more simple and plain 
they are, the better. Neither unshapely, 
nor fantastical ; and for Use and Decency, 
and not for Pride." 

William Penn, 1693. 
** Some Fruits of Solitude.'* 



FERRIS & LEACH, Publishers 

29 North Seventh Street 
1901 



<^'' 



THF 5.JBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two OuiiES RecEi^EO 

my. 30 ]m 


/^t^. T-Z^/ffi Of 
CLASS ^-^ KXc, wo. 

C®FT U. 



Copyright, 1901, by Ferris & Lka.ch. 



Queen Victoria. 

After on eno-raving by Freeman. London, 1837. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The traditional idea of Quakerism always carries 
with it a suggestion of peculiarity in dress; and this 
peculiarity has been so marked, that Quaker life can 
hardly be portrayed without an understanding of the 
history of the garb. The day has come, however, when 
the question of dress, even for the Quaker, is no longer 
bound up with the plan of salvation. We have him 
sufficiently in perspective to turn our modern camera 
upon him, and study the variations of this once vital 
question; for if it is in any degree true that " dress 
makes the man," certain it is that dress at one time 
went far to make a Quaker — at least to the world's 
thinking. There is a picturesque side to the story of 
the Quaker; he himself hardly appreciates how much 
of the romantic there has been in his quiet life. The 
trend of his thought has led him to take himself too 
seriously, and he has lost much of the sense of his rela- 
tion to the great world around him. Quaker dress and 
customs have varied as the times have changed, often 
in a very interesting way; but perfect simplicity, unin- 
fluenced by outside thought, is nowhere to be found in 
this world, short of Patagonia. The student of a philo- 
sophic turn of mind will find much light thrown upon 
the man in drab, if he will attentively observe his 
habits, manner of life and " conversation '' — a word 
meaning in the Quaker, as in the Pauline vocabulary, 



iv. INTRODUCTION. 

his whole style of living, and intercourse with his fel- 
low-men. 

There are three distinct periods into which the his- 
tory of Quaker dress will naturally fall : — the period of 
persecution, when the early Friends had everything at 
stake, and life was to them more than meat and the 
body than raiment; the second, or reactionary period, 
when their position was established, their cause won, 
and prosperity, with its successes, was proving, as it 
always will prove, a far more dangerous foe than the 
perils of adversity; and the third, or modern period, 
when the crisis of the present brings them face to face 
with intricate problems, and dress again falls into its 
proper place in the general scheme of things. We shall 
see that in the face of a real issue, Quakerism disre- 
garded the question of dress; and it is worth while to 
trace the growth and development of the traditional 
idea of Quaker costume, as it has come to be universally 
accepted. In other words, we shall study the Quaker 
in the light of a Higher Criticism, applied to the Doc- 
trine of Clothes. 

Since the great days of persecution, when, for the 
sake of a principle, all the minor " testimonies " gained 
in weight and import, bearing their share in forwarding 
the cause of Truth and Quakerism, many of the beliefs 
then peculiar to a sect are now held by multitudes of 
God-fearing people the world over. A total absence in 
the denominational schools of any proper teaching of 
Quaker history, has in past years made the matter of 
dress a veritable " cross " to many a youthful member, 
who has thrown off the obnoxious burden as soon as he 
was master of his own movements; a result that might 



INTRODUCTION. v. 

frequently have been avoided, had he at all appreciated 
his inheritance. But an understanding of the spirit of 
Quakerism can no more come by heredity alone than 
can any of the other Christian virtues ; and many a 
young soul has lived hungry for some explanation of 
the reason for the singularity forced upon him, quite 
unsatisfied by being told that the elder Friends " de- 
sired to have him encouraged/' The force of example 
in this case has had a magnificent demonstration; but 
even it has failed to give the intelligent understanding 
of causes, without which, when the test comes, the 
strain must prove too great. The present crisis in the 
whole religious world is upon the Quaker no less than 
upon every other member of a sect. How many of his 
young people can judge, from a clear understanding of 
the history of their Society, t\ hethej the new problems 
— social, religious or moral — art. counter to his own 
ancestors' teachings, put forth at the cost of life itself, 
or not? The dead bones of Quaker prophets must be 
made to live again in the history of their lives and all 
they meant, or the youth of the Society cannot be prop- 
erly accounted Quakers. They will doubtless become 
good Christians, in the flood of modern religious teach- 
ing now surrounding them. And it is possible that this 
is enough, and the Quaker has done his part, and won 
repose. If not, then I believe that the Quakers have 
not sufficiently appreciated the immense chasm between 
seventeenth and nineteenth century needs, and that 
there are " crosses " far more weighty to be borne than 
this of the garb, which, if it be worn at all, should be 
regarded as a privilege. The penitential spirit of the 
last century Quaker, rather than combat the great evils 



vi. INTRODUCTION. 

existing in the world about him, and manfully seek to 
clear its political and social atmosphere, spent fruitless 
energy, first, in adding to the weight of this " cross " 
of his peculiar garb, and then in teaching his constitu- 
ency how to be patient under their burden, forgetting, 
as Yaughan has well put it, that " there is quite as 
much self-will in going out of the way of a blessing to 
seek a misery, as in avoiding a duty for the sake of 
ease.'' 

The descriptions here given have in every case had 
the authority of an original article of dress, or the expe- 
rience of a participant in the incident quoted. Despite 
the lapse of time, there still exists ample material for 
the study of Quaker costume. Doll models still remain; 
the flat hat is a treasured relic in more than one family, 
and old silhouettes, daguerreotypes, portraits and pen 
drawings are to be found in many a household whose 
walls have never been adorned with such vanities, sim- 
ply because human affection is too strong to be lightly 
set aside. There is no community of people among 
whom, as a class, family heirlooms, old plate, and the 
costumes of an earlier day are more highly valued or 
more carefully handed down from parent to child, than 
the Quakers. These have been called upon for their 
secrets of the precious past, and have been of great ser- 
vice in preparing the following pages, thanks to their 
generous owners. My acknowledgments are also espe- 
cially due to Mr. Sidney Colvin, of the British Museum, 
for his kind permission to reproduce certain prints, and 
to Charles Roberts, of Philadelphia, for the use of his 
unique collection of Quakeriana. A M G 

Haverford, Pa., 1901. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction, 



CHAPTER 

I.— The Coat, ...... 1 

II.— The Spirit of the Hat, , , . 55 

III.— Beards, Wigs and Bands, . . . .91 

IV.— The Quakeress, . . . • . ^^^ 

v.— The Evolution op the Quaker Bonnet, . . 187 



ILLUSTKATIOITS 

FULL-PAGE PLATES. 



Charles I., . . . . . Frontispiece 

Detail from original paintiag by Van Dyck, in the Louvre. 



William Penn, 



OPP. 
PAGE 



From the full-length mezzotint by Earle, of Philadelphia, after 
the original painting by Inman. 

"From Lively TO Severe," .... 12 

L " Thk Youth befobb Conversion." 
n. "The Youth after Conversion." 

Illustrations for "War with ye Devil, or The Young Man's 
Conflict with ye Powers of Darkness." 1676. By B. K. 
[Benjamin Keach], Bodleian Library. 

George Fox, 1624-1690, . . . . .16 

From an engraving by Allan, after the painting by Chinn. 

Elias Hicks, 1748-1830, .... 41 

From a silhouette. 

Stephen Grellet, 1773-1855, . . . .42 

From a silhouette. 

A Welsh Tea Party, .... 60 

From a recent photograph, by courtesy of The Outlook Company. 

George Dillwyn, 1738-1820, . . . .71 

After an engraving on stone by J. Collins. 

Four Old-Time Pennsylvania Worthies, . . 72 

John Pemberton, 1727-1795. 
Henry Drinker, 1734-1809. 
James Pemberton, 1724-1809. 
John Parrish, 1730-1807. 

Septimus Egberts, 1807, Aged 18, ... 74 

After the etching by Rosenthal. 



OPP. 
PAGE 

William Penn, ..... 96 

After the bust in ivory by Sylvanus Bevan. 

Moses Beown, 1738-1836, . . . . .107 

Engraved by T. Pollock, after the portrait by W, J. Harris. 



GULIELMA Spkingett, First Wife of William Penn, 1644-1694, 129 

From an engraving after the original painting on glass, in 
possession of descendants of Henry Swan, of Dorking, England. 



Hannah Callowhill, Second Wife of William Penn, 1664-1726, 130 

Original painting at Blackwell Hall, County Durham, England. 
Copy in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. 

The Collae, ...... 140 

I. Miss Fitzgerald, Lady-in-waiting TO Quekn 
Caroline. 1800. 

After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 

II. Margaret Morris, Wife of Isaac Collins, 
Jr., 1792-1832. 
From the drawing on stone of A, Newsam, after the original 
painting. 

" Going to Meeting in 1750," . . . .155 

From an original photograph. 



A Quaker Wedding, 1820, .... 162 

After the original painting by Percy Bigland in possession of 
Isaac H. Clothier, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. 

The Two Feiends, . . . . .164 

After the engraving by Bouvier, London. About 1835. 



The Fair Quakee, ..... 166 

London, 1782. 

Elizabeth Fey, 1780-1845, .... 184 

After the portrait by George Richmond, 1824. 

Martha Routh, 1743-1817, .... 190 

Silhouette in possession of Charles Roberts, of Philadelphia. 
The Quakees' Meeting, about 1648, . . .194 

After the original engraving by Egbert van Heemskerck, 



OPP. 

PAGE 

The Calash, ...... 207 

Invented 1765. Worn until about 1830. From an original 
photograph. 

The Cap, ....... 208 

I. Martha Washington, Silhoubtte. 
II. Amelia Opie, 1769-1853. 
EngraTed by Lightfoot, from the medallion done in Paris by David. 

Gracechukch Street Meeting, London, 1776, . 218 

Original painting in Devonshire House collection, London. 



The Beide," . . . . . .219 

From the original in th( 
Castle-upon-Tyne, 1833. 



From the original in the "Aurora Borealis," published at New 
- - .Ty — 



Queen Victoria, ..... 220 

After an engraving by Freeman. London, 1887. 

Fashion Plate, about 1849, . . , .221 

From " Le Conseiller des Dames," Paris. 

Rainy Day Cover, ..... 223 

From an original photograph. 



ILLUSTKATIOlSrS 

IN TEXT MATTEK. 



PAGE 

Initial, Male Costume, 1787, .... 3 



Male Costume, 1818, ..... 35 

After Martin. 

Sunshade, 1760, . . . . . .54 

Initial, Time of James I., • • . . 57 

Hat op Douglas, Earl op Morton, 1553, . . 59 

After Eepton. 

Hat of Charles I., . . . . . 60 

After Martin. 

The " Kevenhuller," . . . . .65 

After Hogarth. 

Owen Jones, Colonial Treasurer of Pennsylvania, 72 

Silhouette. 

Puritan Hat, . . . . . .73 

High-crowned Hat of 1653, .... 73 

Nantucket Beaver Hat, .... 75 

Royalist Hat, Time of Commonwealth, . . 90 

After Martin. 



Initial, Dr. John Fothergill, 



William Dillwyn, 1805 . ... 99 
Silhouette. 

Gabriel-Maec-Antoine de Grellet, 1789, . . 120 
Silhouette of father of Stephen Grellet. 

Initial, Riding Costume, 1763, . . . 123 
After Martin. 

Female Costume, 1835, . . . . .138 

Female Costume, 1787, .... 140 

Headdress, 1756, . . . , , .147 

Lady's Riding Hat, ..... 156 

Female Costumes, 1776, . . . . ,164 

After Martin. 

Hannah Hunt, 1799, ..... 182 
Silhouette of Westtown's first scholar. 

Tail-piece.— Slippers and Clogs, . . ,185 

Initial, Headdress of Reign of Edward I., . 189 

Hood op 1641, . . . . . .192 

Broad-brimmed Hat of English Women, 1635, . 193 
From Hollar. 

Headdress, 1698, . . . . . .194 

From "Memoires, etc., d'Angleterre." 

Hood Worn by Cromwell's Wife, ... 195 

Headdress of Cromwell's Time, . . . .197 

After Kepton. 

Hood Worn by Cromwell's Mother, . . 199 

"Lavinia" Chip Hat, 1819, . . . .202 
Trimmed with white sarsenet ribbon. 



"CoRNETTE," October, 1816, . . . .204 

Composed of tulle, quilling of blonde around face, bunch of 
flowers on top. Style is French, " simply elegant and becoming " ! 

Headdress of 1786, ..... 209 



Parisian Promenade Hat, 1816, . . . .210 

Headdress of 1776, . . . . . 211 

Silhouette. 

Eighteenth Century Flat Hat, . . .215 



Bonnet of Martha, Wife of Samuel Allinson, . 215 

No strings, one large box-pleat in soft crown. 

English Bonnet, . . . . .222 



Bonnet of Eebecca Jones, of Philadelphia, . 225 

From doll model dressed by " Sally Smith," of Burlington, N. J. 
Soft gathered crown, large cape with three points — one on each 
shoulder and one in center of back. 



Tail-piece.— Bonnets, . . . . .228 

" Wilburite."— 1856.— " Gumeyite." 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE COAT. 

And that Friends take care to keep to Truth and plain- 
ness, in language, habit, deportment and behaviour; that the 
simplicity of Truth in these things may not wear out nor be lost 
in our days, nor in our posterity's ; and be exemplary to their 
children in each, and train them up therein ; that modesty and 
sobriety may be countenanced, and the fear of the Lord take 
place and increase among them ; and to avoid pride and 
immodesty in apparel, and extravagant wigs, and all other 
Tain and superfluous fashions of the world ; and in God's holy 
fear watch against and keep out the spirit and corrupt friend- 
ship of the world ; and that no fellowship may be held or had 
•with the unfruitful works of darkness, nor therein with the 
workers thereof. Benjamin Beaung, Clerk. 

Epistle of London Yearly Meeting, 4th mo. 1, 1691. 



CHAPTEK L 



THE CO AT . 




i^ entire generation has passed since the 
distinction of plain dress, as under- 
stood by the Quakers, became obso- 
lete in Great Britain. The singu- 
lar conservatism often shown by a 
democratic people manifests itself in 
this matter, touching the social and 
religious life of the same body in 
America, by the survival in one 
Quaker community of the " plain '* 
dress of a time and occasion long since gone by. 
The Philosopher, whose Carlylean glance compre- 
hends the close relationship existing between man's 
conscience and his clothes, realizes that so far as the 
Society of Friends is concerned, their peculiarities 
of dress belong to past history. He sees also, that 
whether the Quakers, having accomplished a mis- 
sion than which few things are more remarkable in the 
social and religious history of the past, are now quietly 
awaiting extinction, or whether they are standing in the 
pause for breath before they cast aside their encum- 
brances to plunge into the new socialism which should 
be their natural inheritance in the struggles of the new 
century, — in any case the " pride of potential martyr- 
dom,'' as a recent writer puts it, has been one of the 
strongest elements in the old Quakerism. 



4 TEE QUAKER. 

In the burning moment of the first inspiration and 
enthusiasm, when the watchword was, ^' Come out from 
among them and be ye separate/' the emphasis of that 
separateness was sought in the minor " testimonies '' of 
an earnest people. Chief among those " testimonies " 
was plainness of garb. But the world has counted two 
centuries and a half of progress since that day, and its 
myriads of Socialists, Koman Catholics, Salvation Army 
soldiers, and the wide circles of a uniformed official 
class, have overtaken and swept past the Quaker. His 
neat garb and his honest broad-brimmed hat are no 
longer conspicuous in the moderation that has followed 
the periwigged days of King Charles the Second. The 
Quaker has now chosen to lay aside his distinctive garb, 
there being no longer the same occasion for its exist- 
ence. It marks, where it still survives, the formalism 
of a caste, and the day of its inspiration is over. Since 
the modifications inevitable for continuance involve 
the disappearance of the distinguishing outward garb of 
Quakerism, it may not be amiss to seek among its 
records the history of that idea of dress which, in the 
early days of persecution, so strongly fortified the mar- 
tyr-spirit of the Quaker. He who has the seeing eye 
must know that already the beautiful garments of our 
stately grandmothers, the type of Elizabeth Fry, have 
gone forever. Yet let us honor the motives of high 
courage and strong principle which led a whole sect to 
face one of the hardest tests of the human spirit, the 
world's ridicule; the sincerity of their principles is no- 
where better voiced than in the " Advices " given forth 
to its members by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 
1726: " If any who may conceive the Appearance of 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 5 

Plainness to be a temporal Advantage to them do put 
it on with unsanctified Hearts and Minds filled with 
Deceit. . . . Such as they are an Abomination to God 
and to good Men.'' 

The Tatler, indeed, with its inimitable satire, shows 
us how clothes and religion get intermingled. It makes 
Pasquin of Rome write Isaac Bickerstaff : 

There is one thing in which I desire you would be very par- 
ticular. What I mean is an exact list of all the religions in 
Great Britain, as likewise the habits, which are said here to be 
the great points of conscience in England, whether they are 
made of serge or broadcloth, of silk or linen. I should be glad 
to see a model of the most conscientious dress amongst you, 
and desire you will send me a hat of each religion; and likewise, 
if it be not too much trouble, a cravat.* 

There has been no attempt in the following pages to 
enlarge upon the doctrines of the Quakers. That has 
been suflSciently done elsewhere. The peculiarities of 
Quakerism " as to the outward," as Fox would have 
said, have been so marked, and its church polity for the 
past seventy-five years has been so much one of re- 
pression, that the outside world has known little of the 
Quaker; when it has perceived his presence, it has not 
troubled itself to understand him, nor to penetrate the 
atmosphere of exclusiveness that has surrounded him. 



*Tatler, No. 129.— "The Old Cloak," which has been attributed to 
Swift, also points the same moral, although his satire is in this instance, 
not directed particularly against the Quakers. It begins thus : 

" This cloak, it was made in old Oliver's days, 
When zeal and religion were lost in a maze. 
'Twas made by an eider of Lucifer's club, 
Who botch'd on a shop-board and whined in a tub. 
'Twas Tampt out of patches, unseemly to name, 
'Twas hem'd with sedition, & lin'd with the same. 
This cloak to no party was yet ever true, 
The inside was black, and the outside was blue ; 
'Twas smooth all without and rough all within, 
A shew of religion, a mantle to sin." 



(j TEE QUAKER. 

His dress has had much to do with this. N'o one has 
portrayed the Quaker with a worldly hand, and at the 
same time been just to his principles, sympathetic with 
his sufferings, mindful of his foibles; and it is a fact 
that so far no attempt has been made from within the 
pale to handle his garb in the light of other people's 
opinions and experience, to treat him just like another 
man, and to attempt to understand why his costume dif- 
fers. The outsider has regarded the matter as little 
worth his time; while to the Quaker himself, the sub- 
ject has been too sacred to be lightly entered upon. Its 
importance has been so over-emphasized, that his young 
people have often failed to distinguish between the doc- 
trine of oaths and the doctrine of the coat-collar. 

The present essay, then, is an attempt to trace the de- 
velopment of Quaker costume. It has been approached 
like the history of any other costume, with no detriment, 
we trust, to its dignity. The Quaker's interpretation of 
" Truth " has generally been regarded as the cause of 
his peculiarities in dress. And so far as the essential 
doctrine of simplicity as taught by Fox may go, this is 
eminently true. It is true, also, of some of his customs, 
as, for instance, the refusal to doff the hat. The fol- 
lowing pages, however, attempt to show that the typical 
Quaker dress has been, in the case of the men, a sur- 
vival — a crystallization, in essential elements — of the 
original dress of Charles the Second; while that of the 
women has been an evolution, having its culmination one 
hundred and fifty years later in the costume of Elizabeth 
Fry. Both have been influenced to an unappreciated de- 
gree by the fashions of a changing world ; for while the 
Quaker walks this " vale of tears," try as he may to 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 7 

withdraw, he cannot part company with his fellow-citi- 
zens. His past mistake has sprung from his effort to be 
a " peculiar people/' as well as to be " zealous of good 
works." Very little excites ridicule in these modern 
faddist days: certainly no distinctive dress of any sort. 
The wide philanthropy once the inheritance of Quaker- 
ism, now belongs to the world in general. Religious tol- 
eration, for which the Quakers died, bids fair to-day if 
not to extinguish the Society, at least to break down its 
hedges and boundaries. The Athenian wore his flowing 
robe with the wish to be plucked on the sleeve with a 
" what ho ! Philosopher." The Quaker donned his garb 
from the opposite desire to be let alone. This, of course, 
was the Quaker position at a time when details served 
to emphasize the doctrines of their sect. In the two 
hundred and more years that have passed since the days 
of Fox, the occasion for such emphasis has largely dis- 
appeared. 'Not only among Friends, but everywhere, 
the different denominations are tending toward greater 
uniformity. This very fact makes people look leniently 
upon the peculiarities of the Quakers, who had the best 
of reasons at the time of their rise, for their various 
" testimonies." The anecdote may here be recalled of 
Penn and the King, when, to the sovereign's question 
wherein their religious beliefs really differed, the 
Quaker replied, " The difference is the same as between 
thy hat and mine; mine has no ornaments." The 
plain coat bears upon it the marks of an historical devel- 
opment. Warfare and politics are recorded in the cut 
of its collar and the sweep of its tail. Foreign influ- 
ence, civil strife, diplomatic relations and political in- 
trigue all have power to alter fashion and to impress 



8 TEE QUAKER. 

upon a certain generation a particular style of dress. 
The " Steenkirk " tie, the Sedan chair, the farthingale 
and the " tete de mouton " are striking importations 
connected with foreign warfare and politics. But re- 
ligious upheavals stir depths and work changes with a 
rapidity that nothing else can equal. Let a man's con- 
science once become involved in his garb, and the garb 
is capable of the most radical changes. The Eeforma- 
tion introduced simplicity at one bound into the gor- 
geousness of the mediaeval church. Miss Hill points out 
that after Cranmer " it took us three hundred years to 
reach the simplicity of the Victorian era, while the 
Church accomplished the change in one generation.'' 

There is a parallelism between clerical and Quaker 
garb, both in its conservatism and its simplicity of re- 
sult, as well as the profound importance attached to it 
by its adherents. Dean Stanley tells us that the dress 
of the clergy had no distinct intention at the start, 
" symbolical, sacerdotal, sacrificial, or mystical, but 
originated simply in the fashion common to the whole 
community of the Eoman empire during the first three 
centuries." * In the earliest times in England the ton- 
sure was the only distinguishing mark of the clergy. 
Yet we all know to what elaborate proportions clerical 
dress had run in England by the time of Cardinal 
Wolsey; and the list of a few of the ordinary garments 
of a country parson under Henry VIII. would make an 
outfit sufficient for a modern theatrical show. " A 
gown of violet cloth, lined with red, jerkin of tawny 
camlet, tipped with sarcanet, two hoods of violet cloth 

* Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, " Christian Institutions." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 9 

lined with green sarcanet, a black cloth gown trimmed 
with lamb."* Over against this set the reforming 
Cranmer, in his dark cassock and leathern girdle. As 
the Quaker rebelled in spirit against extravagance in 
dress, his impulse was not to devise a new costume, but 
to eliminate from that he wore, the offending elements. 
Hence, retaining the early cut, he evolved in the pass- 
ing years a costume of his own, just as the church 
evolved its own distinctive dress. The clerical habit as 
at present worn in England dates from the time of 
Charles II., as did the William Penn type of dress. It 
is striking to note that the coat of a prominent minister 
among Friends in !N'ew York was given upon his death, 
in 1856, to a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, who 
wore it without requiring any change whatever! We 
are told that Father Greaton, the Jesuit priest who was 
first sent, in 1Y32, from Baltimore to build and settle 
a Eomish Church in the Quaker City (which later be- 
came Saint Joseph's) was v^ily enough on arriving to 
put on the Quaker habit. He soon donned his own 
black clerical garb; but he was careful not to offend the 
Quakers in dress or speech, and his first church building 
might easily have been a meeting-house for plainness. 
The dress of the bishops of the Church of England at 
the present day more nearly resembles that of Penn 
and his colleagues than any garb of modern times; 
vastly more, in fact, than the " plain " dress of their 
spiritual descendants. This includes the linen bands, as 
shown in portraits of Fox and l^ayler.f The clerical 

* Georgiana Hill, " History of English Dress." Vol. I., p. 236. 

t The original of the latter is in the library of Peter's Court Meeting- 
house. London. 



10 TEE QUAKER. 

dress-suit of the present is a correct model of the court 
coat of Charles II., in cut and general style. 

The most picturesque period in the whole history of 
/ English dress was that of the princely Stuarts, as Van 
Dyck has long been telling us. It was an age of swift 
change and vivid contrast, of luxury and unbridled 
license, when extravagance ran riot in the English 
court, and wonderful tales of splendor at Versailles set 
all St. James wild with envy. Great events crowded 
fast upon each other; King Charles lost his royal head, 
after which, for a time, the Protector and the Puritans 
had things their own way. Then followed the Restora- 
tion, with churchly prestige, and debauchery and ex- 
travagance striving together. A feeble attempt at 
popery came next under James II., and finally an estab- 
lished church and prosperity under Queen Anne — all 
this in the lifetime of one man ! Into this scene, with 
its vivid lights and its shadows unfathomable, where 
Cavalier and Roundhead are eyeing each other, hand on 
sword and hate in heart, steps the striking figure of the 
early Quaker; and from the moment of his entrance 
on the stage, a purer faith and liberty of conscience be- 
come possible in dogma-ridden England. His true part 
in English history is yet to be written. Keen to de- 
nounce alike luxury in the court, and crime in the 
slums, loyal always to his sovereign Prince, even if re- 
fusing to doff the hat, or swear allegiance, and true 
always to the impartial enlightenment of every man, 
the Quaker is chiefly to be thanked for many of our 
cherished religious privileges. 

Could George Fox have looked ahead to this day, we 
cannot doubt that he would have been perfectly satis- 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, H 

fied with the simplicity of male costume in the world 
at large; and that the modification must have come 
without George Fox, we may be equally sure. Material 
progress such as ours was not possible when men had 
to guard blue satin coats and costly lace from soil. 
Fancy Mr. Edison at work in lace ruffles ! Even Ben- 
jamin Franklin had to roll up his sleeves. George Fox 
and his contemporaries did not intend to establish a 
precedent of any sort when they demanded, rather ar- 
bitrarily, that their followers should discard all adorn- 
ment in their dress. The Mennonites, who antedate 
them by a few years, and to whom the Quakers are in- 
debted for many of their practices, had adopted sim- 
plicity of attire as one of their cardinal principles; and 
Independents, Presbyterians and others had been em- 
phasizing plainness to an extreme point. The first dis- 
sension in the Ley den community of Separatists came 
from the lace on the sleeve of Mrs. Francis Johnson, ^ 
which furnished a subject for eleven years of strife. 
Bradford says they were so rigid that some of them 
were oflFended at the whalebone in a dress or sleeve, or 
the starch in a collar. The Mennonites disapproved of 
ornaments even more than the Friends did at a later 
date, condemning buttons, buckles, and everything not 
absolutely necessary. The Baptist Brethren in Hol- 
land (a sect that arose in Germany about 1521), were 
called " Heftier '' or " Knopfler,'' because they ex- 
cluded buttons, substituting hooks, like the Mennonite 
branch in Pennsylvania, known locally as " hookers." ^Z 
In some parts of the continent, rows of silver and metal 
buttons were used as ornaments on coats and waist- 
coats; and it was chiefly against these that the Baptist 



13 TEE QUAKER. 

movement was directed. The use of hooks and eyes on 
male garb instead of buttons, was confined to such lo- 
calities as bad made tbe adornment of their clothes 
with a quantity of buttons an almost national custom. 
The plain dress of the Quakers will be found to have 
much more in common with the Baptists, than with the 
Puritans, unless we include, as is often erroneously 
done, most of the dissenting sects of England under the 
latter head. In the United States, certainly, the many 
Puritan laws as to the dress of both sexes, and the 
elaborate detail of rules regarding every minor item, 
with the frequent enumeration of costly and extrava- 
gant fashions, lead us inevitably to the conclusion that 
the JSTew England Puritan was far from the plain and 
meek person our fancy has been taught to draw; but 
rather that he was gorgeous in his highly colored rai- 
ment, his wigs and velvet ; that his wife was a positively 
appalling person in her finery, so soon as prosperity had 
come to the thrifty pair in their adopted land. 

We can respect the feelings of the first Quakers as 
to ornaments, for their " testimony " had a distinct ob- 
ject to accomplish; many felt with Ellwood about 
*^ those Fruits and Effects of Pride, that discover them- 
selves in the Vanity and Superfluity of Apparell which 
I, so far as my Ability would extend to, took alas ! too 
much delight in. This evil of my doings I was re- 
quired to put away and cease from; and Judgment lay 
upon me till I did so. Wherefore, ... I took off from 
my apparel those unnecessary Trimmings of Lace and 
Ribbands and useless Buttons which had no real ser- 
vice, but were set only for that which was by Mistake 
called Ornament, and I ceased to wear Pings." * 

* Journal of Thomas Ellwood. 



''Prom Lively to Severe y 

I. '■'■The Youth before Convei'siony 
II. '■'■TJie Youth after Conversions^ 

Ilhtstrations for '■'■War tvith ye Devil, or The Young Man's Conflict 

with ye Powers of Darkness.^^ ibyb. By B. K. [Benjoniiji 

ICeach~\, Bodleian Library. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. , 13 

By a very similar line of spiritual experience, 

Thomas Story was led to a point where the vanity of 

human wishes was forcibly presented to him; for even 

before learning of the peculiar tenets of the Friends, he 

had adopted some of their outward characteristics, in 

discarding sword and ornaments of dress. He did not 

meet the man whose influence led him to become a 

Quaker until 1691; yet in 1689, to use his own words: 

I put off my usual Airs, my jovial Actions and Address, 
and .. laid aside my Sword, which I had wore, not thro* 
design of Injury, or Fear of any, but as a modish and manly 
Ornament. 1 burnt also my Instruments of Musick, and divested 
myself of the superfluous Parts of my Apparel, retaining only 
that which was necessary or deem'd decent. The Lust of the 
Flesh, the Lust of the Eye and the Pride of Life, had their Ob- 
jects and Subjects presented; The Airs of Youth were many 
and potent; Strength, Activity and Comeliness of person were 
not a-wanting, and had their share; nor were natural Endow- 
ments of Mind or Competent Acquirements afar off, and the 
Glory, Advancements and Preferments of the World, spread as 
Nets in my View, and the Friendship thereof beginning to ad- 
dress me with flattering Courtship. I wore a sword, which I 
well understood, and had foil'd several Masters of that Science, 
in the North and at London; and rode with firearms also, of 
which I knew the Use; and yet I was not quarrelsome; for 
though I emulated, I was not envious; But this rule I formed 
as a Man to myself, never to offend or affront any wilfully, or 
with Design; and if, inadvertently, I should happen to disoblige 
any, rather to acknowledge, than to maintain or vindicate a 
wrong thing; and rather to take ill Behaviour from others by the 
best Handle, than be offended where no offence was wilfully 
designed. But then I was determined to resent, and punish an 
Affront or personal Injury, when it was done in Contempt or 
with Design; and yet I never met with any, save once; and 
then I kept to my own Maxims with Success; and yet so as 
neither to wound nor be wounded; the good Providence of Al- 
mighty being ever over me; and on my side, as ever knowing my 
Meaning in all my Conduct.* 

* Thomas Story, Journal, Folio ed., p. 15. 



14 THE QUAKER. 

The Quakers, in fact, will be found to have held a 
middle ground between the austerities of the old-line 
Cromwellian Puritans and Roundheads, and the ex- 
travagances of the Cavaliers. The peculiarities to 
which in later days they so closely adhered, were the 
outgrowth natural to a body which clung to practices 
that were once established, with the tenacity of larger 
but no less strongly organized religious bodies, like the 
Roman Catholics, the Mohammedans, or even the 
Chinese. A distinctive form of dress was at no time 
adopted by the Quakers with " malice prepense.'' The 
fact that in the second century of their existence a 
peculiar garb came to be regarded as so essential, goes 
to prove, not vitality, but rather a period of decadence 
in their religious principles. The marked changes that 
Quaker costume has undergone, while they have not 
kept pace with the outside world as regards frequency 
of modification, are yet important as an element in 
studying the history of the sect. A cause is often 
greatly strengthened by the moral support of a dis- 
tinctive and conspicuous style of dress, as for instance, 
that of the Salvation Army. John Wesley regretted 
that he had not made a regulation about dress. He 
wrote in his Journal : " I might have been firm (and 
I now see it would have been far better) as either the 
people called Quakers or the Moravians; I might have 
said, this is our manner of dress, which we know is both 
scriptural and rational. If you join with us, you are 
to dress as we do, but you need not join us unless you 
please; but, alas ! the time is now past.'' 

George Fox, however, did not dream of such meas- 
ures among his own people. The simple, unadorned 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 15 

costume of the men of his generation was all that Fox 
aspired to. Along with his admonitions as to all ways of 
living, he included in his denunciations every extrava- 
gance of dress. This alone meant a revolution diflficult 
for us to realize. The extremest form of Paris fashion 
to-day would be simplicity itself compared with the 
dress of an English aristocrat in the time of the first 
Charles. Until the early part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, there appears to have been no really distinctive 
^cut in Quaker costume. It is to be described in nega- 
tions, was like that of every one else, and was only con- 
spicuous for what it lacked of the popular extravagances 
of the day. When men wore even more elaborate cos- 
tumes than women, as in the days of the " merry mon- 
arch," anything plain was noted at once. Cromwell's 
dress was so much more simple than that of the kings 
before and after him, that Quaker simplicity was in his 
time less conspicuous. The Protector was very frugal 
in attire. He wore black cloth or velvet, sword-scarf, 
trunk-hose, long boots, grey hat and silver clasp ; varied 
at times with doublet, cloak and hose of coarse cloth 
turned up with velvet, and stockings of grey worsted 
reaching over the knee to meet the hose. His hair 
was simply arranged, without curls, and was somewhat 
long behind. His moustache was so small as to be 
quite inconspicuous. At fifty-eight he looks like a 
Quaker himself, with his muslin collar and long hair. 
In his portrait, by Walker, in the National Gallery, a 
page ties his sash. Quakers and Puritans under the 
Protector were more distinguished for differences of 
opinion than differences of garb. An old author de- 
clares that " short cloaks, short hair, short bands and 



16 THE QUAKER. 

long visages '' were the rule. What we understand as 
J the typical Quaker garb, worn by William Penn, was a 
survival of that of Charles the Second, when the dis- 
tinctive outward marks of Quakerism were burned into 
the sect, so to speak, by the rigors of persecution. The 
dress of Fox was more nearly that of Charles the First. 
This was to be expected of the plain countryman, who 
would naturally cling to the more old-fashioned garb; 
he never discarded the doublet, and always wore his 
own hair long; whereas Penn, the diplomat and 
courtier, followed the fashions in the cut and style of 
his dress, adopting the full-skirted coat of the sovereign, 
and wearing as many as four wigs in one year. 

To test the correctness of this comparison, let us take 
the costume of Charles the First as we have him in the 
great portrait by Van Dyck in the Louvre. The King 
wears a hunting dress consisting of white satin coat, 
knee breeches in red, long boots with square toes, flat 
lace collar, long hair, a pearl drop in the left ear (which 
he even wore to his execution), and carries an enor- 
mously long cane. Divest him now of all his super- 
fluities. Pemove the enormous feather in his hat, and 
Fox's own broadbrim stands revealed. Both King and 
subject wear the hair " banged " on the forehead, fall- 
ing in long locks on the shoulder — only the curls and 
perfume are wanting in the Quaker. The lace worn by 
the King at throat and wrists is missing altogether 
with Fox, plain bands only being visible over his drab 
coat, which buttons to the throat, and takes the place 
of the King's satin doublet and rich cloak. But every 
other man of plain origin wears a doublet of similar 
cut to that of Fox, the drab in his case being for the 



George Fox, i624-i6go. 

From an engraving by Allan, after the painting by Chinn. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 17 

sake of economy^ and hence simplicity in not dyeing the 
cloth. Leathern breeches and jerkins were universal 
among the " plainer sort/' as George Fox called them, 
and were also worn from motives of economy. Trou- \^ 
sers were not to be invented for another century. The 
style of knee-breeches, stockings and low shoes is iden- 
tical with Fox and his King. The only difference is 
one of ornament. Fox's breeches have no "points,'' 
as the elaborate bows of jewelled ribbon at the knee 
were called; the stockings are of homespun, not silk, 
like the King's; and the heavy, square-toed shoes are 
minus the elaborate ribbons on the instep. Even the 
long cane is common to both. Samuel Smith, of Phila- 
delphia, who kept a Journal, and who died in 1817, 
aged eighty-one, says of his travels in England: "At 
Samuel Lythall's, where we lodged, I saw the staff, it is 
said, George Fox used to travel with — a large cane stick 
about four feet in length and ivory head — ^looked as 
though it might have belonged to a country squire, and 
probably had been Judge Fell's." And this is all. 
The dress of the Quaker, when he first arose, was in cut 
and fashion simply the dress of everybody, with all ex- ^ 
travagances left off; and since costume was then so 
elaborate, his perfect simplicity was quite enough to 
draw attention and render him conspicuous, even had 
he held his peace. 

transmutation! 
Of satin changed to kersey hose I sing.* 

But this he could not do, and many were his testi- 
monies. In 1654, Fox wrote: 

*Newcut, in " The City Match," I, 4. By Jasper Mayne, 1639. 



18 THE QUAKER. 

My spirit was greatly burthened to see the pride that was 
got up in the nation, even among professors; in the sense where- 
of I was moved to give forth a paper directed 

" TO SUCH AS FOLLOW THE WORLD'S FASHIONS. 

"What a world is this! how doth the devil garnish himself! 
how obedient are people to do his will and mind! They are alto- 
gether carried away with fooleries and vanities, both men and 
women. They have lost the hidden man of the heart, the meek 
and quiet spirit; which with the Lord is of great price. They 
have lost the adorning of Sarah; they are putting on gold and 
gay apparel, women plaiting the hair, men and women powdering 
it ; making their backs look like bags of meal. . . . They must 
be in the fashion of the world, else they are not in esteem; nay, 
they shall not be respected, if they have not gold or silver upon 
their backs, or if the hair be not powdered. But if one have 
store of ribands hanging about his waist at his knees, and in 
his hat, of divers colours, red white black or yellow, and his 
hair powdered, then he is a brave man, then he is accepted, then 
he is no Quaker. He hath ribands on his back, belly, and knees, 
and his hair powdered: this is the array of the world. . . . 
Likewise, the women having their gold, their patches on their 
faces, noses, cheeks, foreheads, their rings on their fingers, wear- 
ing gold, their cuffs double under and above, like a butcher with 
his white sleeves; their ribands tied about their hands, and 
three or four gold laces about their eloaths; this is no Quaker, 
say they. . . . Are not these, that have got ribands hanging 
about their arms, hands, back, waists, knees, hats, like fiddler's 
boys? And further, if one get a pair of breeches like a coat, and 
hang them about with points and up almost to the middle, a 
pair of double cuffs upon his hands, and a feather in his cap, 
here's a gentleman; bow before him, put off your hats, get a 
company of fiddlers, a set of music, and women to dance. . . . 
They are not in the adorning of the Lord, which is a meek and 
quiet spirit, and is with the Lord of great price." 

Late in life, in Second month, 1690, lie issued from 
the home of his stepson-in-law, William Meade, at 
Gooseyes, whither he had retired in feeble and broken 
health, a note of warning directed " To such as follow 
the fashions of the world." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 19 

Thomas Ell wood, whose Journal is one of the most 
graphic pictures of the day, but who, it is to be hoped, 
was a better tutor than poet, thus bewailed the preval- 
ent extravagance: 

But Oh! the Luxury and great Excess 
Which by this wanton Age is us'd in Dress! 
What Pains do Men & Women take, alas! 
To make themselves for arrant Bedlam's pass! 
The Fool's py'd Coat, which all wise Men detest, 
Is grown a Garment now in great Kequest. 
More Colours now in one Waist-Coat they wear 
Than in the Rainbow ever did appear. 



And he that in a modest Garb is drest, 

Is made the Laughing-stock of all the rest. 

Nor are they with their Baubles satisfy'd, 

But sex-distinctions too are laid aside; 

The Women wear the Trowsies and the Vest, 

While Men in Muffs, Fans, Petticoats are drest. 

He warns Friends of the danger of the modes, and 



It hath come to pass that there is scarce a new Fashion come 
Tip, or a fantastiek Cut invented, but some one or other that pro- 
fesses Truth, is ready with the foremost to run into it. . . . 
Assuredly, Friends, if Truth be kept to, none will need to learn 
of the World what to wear, what to put on, how to shape or 
fashion their Garments, but Truth will teach all how best to 
answer the end of clothing. . . . Let every one examine himself 
that this Achan, with his Babylonish Garment, may be found out 
and cast out, for indeed, he is a Troubler of Israel.* 

" Babylonish garments '^ sorely troubled the 
Friends, and it was with those of them who were tail- 
ors by trade much as it was with John Mulliner and 

* Thomas Ellwood, Journal, p. 343. 



20 TEE QUAKER. 

his musical instruments.* Gilbert Latey, a very inter- 
esting character of that early day, was a master tailor, 
whose attention to business, combined with his natural 
tact and uprightness, had won for him a very lucrative 
trade among the worldly, so that he was patronized by 
the gentlemen of fortune about the court. Becoming 
one of the '' Children of the Light," he was no longer 
able to make the gay clothing that the fops of the day 
required, and he imperilled his fortune by declining to 
take any more such orders, although eventually a 
steady plain trade remained to him as his reward of 
faithfulness. King Charles the Second, while out 
hunting one day, met him upon the road, and the merry 
monarch called out to the Quaker tailor to step up to 
his horse's side for a chat, after which, with words of 
cheer, the King rode to his hounds, while the Quaker 
pursued his way to meeting, f 

But the question of dress became more and more im- 
portant as the cessation of active persecution gave the 
Friends time to devote more attention to its details. 
Dress was every day growing more and more extrava- 
gant; there seemed no limit to the extremes which it 
might reach. A cursory glance at the old fashion 
plates of this period, or an examination of Hogarth's 
works of a satirical character, will show us in a mo- 
ment the reason for the emphasis laid on dress by the 
early Quakers — not the earliest, however, for these had 
been occupied with a struggle that involved life itself, 
and had no time for attention to clothes. Between 

* See chapter on Wigs. 

fBeck and Ball, " History of London Friends' Meetings," p. 250. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 21 

1660 and 1680, men's dress underwent many more 
changes than that of women. A large portion of a 
gentleman's time was given over to his elaborate toil- 
ette, and fortunes were squandered on lace and wigs 
by the fops and ladies of fashion. To these evils the 
Quakers very naturally directed their condemnation, 
and the subject became a prominent one in the care and 
instruction of their youth. How to guard a young man 
from the dangerous fascinations of a periwig that meas- 
ured some three or four feet in length, or a young 
woman from a spreading farthingale, or a tight bodice 
in which she could barely draw the breath of life, may 
not seem to us now so very difficult; but we may be as- 
sured that the struggle was a hard one. l^o matter 
into what eccentricity Dame Fashion led her followers, 
they were willing to be guided by any blind extrava- 
gance; and the youthful Quaker cast longing eyes in 
her direction, even if she masqueraded in wig or farth- 
ingale, petticoat-breeches or wide hoop. More and 
more stringent became the laws of the Quakers on the 
subject ; and while Aberdeen seems to have breathed in 
the atmosphere of the Scotch Covenanters a spirit more 
rigid than is to be found anywhere else in the limits of 
the Society, London and Dublin were not far behind. 
It is instructive to notice that drab tape was just as bad 
as red tape. 

In 1686 the Meeting in Dublin seems to have shown 
very high order of talent in dealing with the question 
of dress, and went to the root of the matter when it at- 
tempted to purify the source of supply. The General 
Meeting appointed meetings of tailors "to see that 
none did exceed the bounds of truth in making of ap- 



22 TEE QUAKER. 

parel according to the vain and changeable fashions of 
the world ; " and these meetings of " merchant tail- 
ors and clothiers '' reported to the church. They very 
judiciously advised Friends to " wear plain stuffs and 
to sell plain things, and tailors to make clothes plain." 
And also to ensure their wishes, " Friends would do 
well to employ Friends that are tailors, for the en- 
couragement of those Friends of that trade that cannot 
answer the world's fashions." This may be the rea- 
son, as Barclay * suggests, that Dublin Friends were 
spared the details of Christian simplicity that appear 
on the books of their Scotch brethren, and from which 
we may get an insight into the drastic measures of 
Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The trade plan, we are told, 
worked so well, that in 1693 they invoked the aid of 
joiners, ship-carpenters, brass-founders, saddlers and 
shoe-makers, to give their judgment to the meeting '^ in 
the matter of the furniture of houses, etc., etc."; " fine, 
shining, glittering tables, stands, chests of drawers and 
dressing-boxes;" "large looking-glasses and painting 
of rooms," as well as " painted or printed hangings." 
Where these latter were needful, they would do well to 
advise with concerned Elders of their meetings before 
they put them up. 

The Overseers of the church traveled over the coun- 
try. They inspected the shops to see if " needless 
things were sold," such as " lace and ribbons." They 
inspected the houses with ornamental " eaves," and of 
superfluous size, from the drawing-room curtains, with 
other " Babylonish adornings " which were declared to 

* Robert Barclay, " Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Common- 
wealth." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 23 

be " needless," to the kitchens whose array of " shin- 
ing, needless '^ pewter and brass pots, pans and candle- 
sticks were evidently for ornament, and therefore con- 
trary to the " simplicity of truth." Figured, striped 
or flowered stuffs, cloths or silks were, about 1693, gen- 
erally condemned. As Barclay, from whom we have 
already quoted, says: " The whole life of man, from the 
cradle to the grave, was legislated upon; the ornaments 
on his cradle were to be dispensed with. Mothers were 
to suckle their children. It hath also been recom- 
mended to our Women's Meeting causing [concerning ?] 
their child-bed dressings and superfluities of that nature 
that things may answer the plainness of Truth's princi- 
ples both in themselves and their children from their 
births upwards. Coffins ought to be made plain, without 
covering of cloth or needless plates." In 1717 they or- 
der that chaises, except when absolutely necessary, are a 
needless luxury. The food, dress and even the gait of 
the children come under the care of the officers of the 
meeting, as well as the deportment of the nursemaids ! 
In 1719 ^^ floor-cloth," or the new fashion of carpets j 
was denounced, grateful to the feet of young and old 
on the cold, chilly floors in an English winter, but 
savoring of other vanities then being introduced with, 
the growth of the Eastern trade under the care of the 
new East India Company. The question was, how far 
can one go before a comfort becomes a snare or a 
vanity. A vast amount of time was wasted in searching 
for the line of demarcation. Just before this, ^^ the 
fashionable using of tea '' (another Eastern importa- 
tion, now become as national as the Union Jack), was 
ordered to be avoided; tea-tables to be laid aside, ^' as 



i^ 



24 THE QUAKER. 

formerly advised"; and snuff, snuff-boxes, and the 
chewing and smoking of tobacco, " except when need- 
ful,^' are reprobated! Tobacco, in the early days, was 
more universally used among the plain Friends than 
now. William Penn is said to have enjoyed his pipe, as 
did many another worthy. An unlocated minute of 
Kinth month, 1691, runs: 

It being discovered that the common excess of smoaking 
tobacco is inconsistent with our Holy Profession, this meeting 
adviseth that such as have oecation to make use of it, take it 
privately, neither in their Labour nor employment nor by the 
highway, nor alehouses or elsewhere, too publicly.* 

The climax, however, is reached, when we are told 
that a lowly mind would rather " admire the wonderful 
hand of Providence " in contemplating the necessary 
than the beautiful in nature, and the eye is not to be 
indulged in " great superfluity and too great nicety in 
gardens.'' In other words, turnips and cabbages tend 
to keep the mind humble, but the rose and the lily may 
prove a snare ! And this, in the land of gardening and 
wall-fruit, where even the gooseberry is idealized ! It 
surely is a wonder that all artistic sense has not been 
crushed out of the sect in two hundred years of such 
arbitrary dictation to the consciences of people, as may 
be found through the greater part of the eighteenth 
century among the Quakers, when they were a prosper- 
ous, not a persecuted, body. But the elasticity of hu- 
man nature, and the eternal demand for some outlet to 
his pent-up artistic enthusiasm, is being manifested to- 
day in the reaction of the modern young Quaker in 
favor of music and the arts generally. 

* Manuscript copy of old English Minutes, in possession of the author, 
made by Henry Hull, of New York, 1850. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 25 

The plain Quaker administered a silent reproof to 
all extravagance wherever he appeared, and the lam- 
poons and broadsides of the day began their scurrilous 
attacks almost as soon as church and state combined to 
persecute him in earnest. One reason that we have 
heard so little of the anti-Quaker literature of 1655 to 
1700 is because of its indecency. At a time when no- 
body was nice in speech or manners, it can hardly be 
imagined to what depths the popular lampoon sank; so 
that we are forced to leave these bits of Quaker history 
where we find them — ^buried in musty collections in the 
public libraries of England, or on the shelves of Ameri- 
can antiquarians. It is necessary, however, to note 
their existence, since they show how the world regarded 
the Quaker. Those quoted are among the most decent. 
The Quakers were derided and pursued by every one. 
Their simplicity was said to be for purposes of decep- 
tion; their frugality and consequent thrift were mocked 
at as penuriousness ; their marriages without the priest 
were declared illegal, and their children were scoffed at 
as illegitimate. E'o stone was left unturned to render 
their lives a burden. This was a popular description: 

A Quaker is an everlasting Argument; For like Afrique, he is 
daily teeming with some new Wonder; he that can describe him 
fully may boast he hath squared the circle. . . . His looks and 
habit cry " Pray observe me ", and his whole deportment is 
starched and affected; you may take his face for a new-fashioned 
Sun-Dyal, where the forced wrinkles represent Hower lines, and 
his Tunable nose the gnomen. If he wants money, he need only 
say to one of his gang " The Lord hath sent me to borrow of 
thee 40 shillings." . . . These new seers ramble about to estab- 
lish certain little Fopperies, as if the Salvation of the World 
depended on the Preaching down of Points, Cuffs, Tyth-Pigs and 
Pulpit -Hour-glasses; he is a kind of spiritual Gypsy that de- 
scribes Grace and Piety by the Lines of the Physiognomy, and 



26 THE QUAKER. 

confines Christianity to such a Complexion or habit, being con- 
fident that cannot be a wedding garment that hath any trim- 
ming. . , . But 'tis no small attempt to encounter a Party whose 
Impious Penn hath presumed to duel the sacred Trinity. 

"A candle of himself can't stand upright; — 
The reason is, because his head is light." * 

An anti-Quaker tract of 1679 f says: " The Quakers 
cry out against all external ornaments, whilst them- 
selves at the same time doat most wickedly upon a 
Quirp-cravat, copied from a Chitterling original." 

The Quaker was universally known as " Aminadab." 

Says Misson: 

The Quakers are great Fanaticks; there seems to be some- 
thing laudable in their outward Appearance — they are mild, sim- 
ple in all respects, sober, modest, peaceable — nay, and they have 
the reputation of being honest; and they often are so. But 
you must have a Care of being Bit by this Appearance, which 
very often is only outward.^ 

Such universal dislike was the logical result of their 
contrast to the exaggerated verbiage and ornate dress 
of the time. It is natural to expect less difference be- 
tween the early Quakers and the " world's people " in 
cut and style of dress than in the society even seventy- 
five years after the death of Fox, for the very good 

*"Plus Ultra, Or the Second Part of the Character of a Quaker, 
etc." 1672. 

t " Work for a Cooper. Being an answer to a Libel." 1679. 
Printed by J, C. for S. C. Prince of Wales Arms. 

X " Les Quaeres sont de grands fanatiques. II parvit en eux quelque 
chose de louable : il semble qu'il soient doux, simples a tous 6gards, sohres, 
modestes, paisables : ils ont m^me la reputation d'etre fideles, et cela est 
souvent vrai. Mais il ne faut pas s'y tromper, car il y a souvent aussi bien 
du fard dans tout cet exterieur." 

" Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre, 
1698." Quoted by Repton, in an article On the Development of Hats 
and Bonnets, from the Time of Henry VIII., to the Present Day. 
Published in Archseologia, Vol. XXIV., p. 174. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 27 

reason that when persecution was following them, and 
they were being scourged, imprisoned and beaten to 
death, dress was a subject little dwelt upon. Simplicity 
only was taught; no distinctiveness other than that in- 
duced by its practice. A few years later matters are 
very different,* and the cut of the coat has become 
almost an essential in the plan of salvation. The process 
of adoption of a Quaker fashion has thus been described 
by an anonymous English writer f ; 

A novelty in dress is at first regarded as objectionable; tben 
it is admitted and not considered inconsistent; and lastly, when 
the rest of men have passed from it, it is clung to with all the 
devotion which our society entertains for its peculiar customs. 
Where are now the cocked hats that were at first a vanity and 
afterward the outward visible signs of Quakerism, and have now 
. . . disappeared? Where are the green aprons that became us 
as a people? Where is the testimony against trousers, that, \t 
one may trust tradition, once agitated the Society, and was the 
theme of discourses that claimed to be the utterances of eternal 
wisdom? 

Our author concludes by saying that if we wear to- 
day George Fox's coat, we cannot retain the principle; 
if we retain the principle, we cannot retain the coat. 

" A Pious Gentleman that had been thirteen years 
among the Separatists to make observations,'^ wrote 
warningly in a Broadside to his countrymen in 16 57: 

* William Penn, Jr., to James Logan : 

*' Worminghurst, Aug. 18, 1702. 
" My dress is all they can complain of, and that but decently genteel, 
without extravagance ; and as for the poking iron (sword), I never had 
courage enough to wear one by my side." 

Howard M. Jenkins, " The Family of William Penn," p. 109. 

Soon after, his father, the Founder, thus writes of him to James 
Logan in Pennsylvania: "Pray Friends to bear all they can, and melt 
toward him at least civilly, if not religiously." Ibid., p. 111. 

t " Nehushtan ; A Letter addressed to the Members of the Society of 
Friends on their Peculiarities of Dress and Language." London, 1859. 



28 THE QUAKER. 

The Puritan vSpirit was the spirit of Quakerism in the first de- 
gree, — which thing wise men know full well. , . . For 1 know, 
countrymen, what I say, that three parts of you that are re- 
ligiously affected at this day are possessed with that humour 
that will make you Quakers if you take not great heed.* 

Banbury was a great stronghold of dissenters, chiefly 
Presbyterians; but many Quakers were yearly tried at 
the Banbury Assizes, from the neighborhood of Oxford- 
shire. Castor, in " The Ordinary," an old play by Cart- 
wright, 1651, says: 

I'll build a cathedral next in Banbury ; 

Give organs to each parish in the Kingdom, 

And so root out the unmusical sect.f 

The cant of the Presbyterians laid them open to an 
equal amount of ridicule with the Quakers. Little Wit 
in " Bartholomew Fair," is made to say: " Our mother 
is a most elect hypocrite, and has maintained us all this 
seven year like gentlefolks." 

An old play, ^^ The City Match," makes Aurelia thus 
remonstrate against the preaching tendencies of her 
Presbyterian maid: 

"Oh, Mr. Banswright, are you come? My woman 

Was in her preaching fit; She only wanted 

A table's end." 

Banswright. " Why, what's the matter ? " 

Aurelia. " Never 

Poor lady had so much unbred holiness 

About her person: I am never drest 

Without a sermon: but am forced to prove 

The lawfulness of curling-irons before 

She'll crisp me in the morning. I must show 

Text for the fashions of my gowns. She'll ask 

Where jewels are commanded? Or what lady 

I'th primitive times, wore ropes of pearl or rubies? 

**' Anti-Quakerism, or The Character of the Quaker Spirit." Lon- 
don, 1659. 

tActll., Sc. 3. 



A 8TUDT IN COSTUME. 29 

She will urge councils for her little ruflFs 

Call'd in Northamptonshire, and her whole service 

Is but a confutation of my clothes.* 

The long grace of the Presbyterian was another of 
his characteristics often ridiculed. We read of 
One tliat cools a feast 

With his long grace, and sooner eats a capon 
Than blesses it. 

or this: 

Dost thou ever think to bring thy ears or stomach to the 
patience of a dry grace as long as thy tablecloth; and droned 
out by thy son here till all the meat on thy board has forgot it 
was that day in the kitchen, or to brook the noise made in a 
question of predestination by the good laborers and painful eat- 
ers assembled together, put to them by the matron, your spouse, 
who moderates with a cup of wine ever and anon, and a sen- 
tence out of Knox between ? t 

The Quakers were thus derided in a similar way: 

Water us young Shrubs, with the Dew of Thy blessing; that 
we may grow up into TaU Oaks, and may live to be saw'd out 
into Deal Boards, to wainscot Thy New Jerusalem! t 

The Puritans, as we have seen, emphasized plainness 
of garb, but evaded the spirit of the law when they 
wrought embroidered texts upon their garments with 
a view to " moralize " them. The old play, previously 
quoted, has the following: 

Nay, Sir, she is a Puritan at her needle, too: 

She works religious petticoats; for flowers 

She'll make church histories; besides, 

My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries, 

And are so learned, that I fear in time 

All my apparel will be quoted by 

* Jasper Mayne, " The City Match. " 1639. 

t " Quarlous," in " Bartholomew Fair," Act I., So. 1. 

J "The Quaker's Grace." Thomas Brown, "Works, Serious and 
Comical." London, 1720. 



so THE QUAKER. 

Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went 
To see a lady that has a parrot; my woman, 
While I was in discourse, converted the fowl; 
And now it can speak but Knox's Works; — 
So there's a parrot lost.* 

The Puritan ladies showed great ingenuity in the 
choice and execution of some of the sacred themes that 
appeared upon the garments of members of their fami- 
lies. The custom lived but a short life, because of its 
elaborate and expensive development. The texts and 
sacred scenes that v^ere thus worked upon clothing in 
lace and embroidery, remind us of the fourteenth cen- 
tury fashion of emblazoning armorial bearings upon the 
dress. This custom became general in France during 
the reign of Charles Y. A general sumptuary law in 
the time of the Eoses, applied to all classes, forbade cut- 
ting the edges of sleeves or borders of gowns into the 
form of letters or other devices; and the tailor who 
made such gown was subject to imprisonment. f The 
extravagant display of gold lace and thread grew among 
the Puritans to an abuse that rapidly put an end to this 
sort of " moralizing," which was in every way opposed 
to the professed simplicity of Puritanism. We read in 
Beaumont and Pletcher: / 

Having a mistress, sure you should not be 
Without a neat historical shirt? % 

The range of color in Quaker clothing seems to have 
been early limited to the browns and grays. Thomas 
Ellwood says that there was a man in the Monthly 
Meeting at Isaac Pennington's who " had his eye often 

* Jasper Mayne, " The City Match." 1639. 

tGeorgiana Hill, " History of English Dress." Vol. I., p. 137. 

X " Custom of the Country." Act II., Sc. 1. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 31 

upon me, for I was a young Man and had at that time 
a black Suit on/' This was, of course, very early in the 
period of Ellwood's convincement. The women had a 
rather wider scope at first, but after the opening of the 
eighteenth century plain colors were universal among 
the Quakers. In the neighborhood of Oxford, indeed, 
brown was under a ban for a short time. " Heretofore 
Friends chose to wear grey clothing out of a dislike to 
brown, because it bore the name of a certain man of ^/ 
Abingdon that had stuck close upon the skirts of 
Friends thereabouts.'' * All wearing apparel was 
treated seriously, and was bequeathed to relatives and 
friends, and great minuteness was shown in disposing 
of it. The laborer in Queen Anne's day wore the broad 
brim, flat, felt hat that had been discarded by the man 
of fashion; a jerkin or short coat, knee breeches and 
heavy yarn stockings. The breeches were often of 
leather, adding to the neutral coloring in the matter of 
dress.^ The man of the world, on the other hand, was 
correspondingly gay. Even Robespierre, a century 
later, as Carlyle tells us, wore a sky blue coat, a white 
silk waistcoat, embroidered with silver, black silk 
breeches, white stockings, and gold shoe buckles. The 
doublet in Charles the Second's time was cut; it then 
became longer than before, and was adorned with the 
new buttons, just introduced, down the front. There 
was one royal attempt at reformation in dress, but it 
did not succeed, f 

*See "Quaker's Art of Courtship," by the author of " Teague- 
Land Jests— Calculated for the Meridian of the Bull and Mouth." Abing- 
don had long been famous for its woolens, even then. 

tFor the new costume of the King, see Pepys' Diary, Vol. VI., 
p. 29. "A long cassock close to the body, of black cloth pinked with 
white silke under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black 
riband like a pigeon's leg." Oct. 15, 1666. 



32 TEE QUAKER. 

By the end of this reign the picturesque old doublet 
had vanished and the King's coat was almost of the 
eighteenth century cut. The dragoons of this and the 
succeeding reign wore their brilliant red coats in the 
new square fashion, with ample sleeves, and skirts 
turned back with two buttons. This was the coat worn 
by everybody for the next hundred years, Quakers as 
well as others, with slight modifications. It was not 
until the end of the century that coats became short 
and grew a tail. William Penn's skirts were full — and 
why ? Because the Stuart reign demanded a sword un- 
der the coat — quite as a mere matter of decency; and 
when William renounced the sword it did not strike 
him as at all necessary to curtail his ample skirts in 
anticipation of what, one hundred years later, came to 
be known as the " shad-belly " of his Pennsylvania suc- 
cessor. Yet skirts could be too full, even then. 

20th. of 9 mo. 1688. It is concluded, that the Friends appointed 
in every particular meeting shall give notice publicly in the 
meeting that cross-pockets before men's coats, side slopes, broad 
hems on cravats, and overfull skirted coats are not allowed by 
Friends.* 

The American Friends were not behind their Eng- 
lish cousins in this matter of plainness, and earlier even 
than this period had been warning their constituency of 
the dangers of conformity to worldliness. 

In 1695 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting advised: 

That all that profess the Truth and their Children, whether 
young or grown up, keep to Plainess in Apparel as becomes the 
Truth and that none wear long-lapped Sleeves, or Coats gathered 
at the Sides, or Superfluous Buttons, or broad Ribbons about 
their Hats, or long curled Periwiggs, and that no Women, their 
Children or Servants dress their heads immodestly or wear their 

* MS. of Henry Hull. 



A STUDT IN COSTUME. 33 

Garments indecently as is too common; nor wear long Scarves; 
and that all be careful about making, "buying or wearing (as 
much as they can) strip'd or flower'd Stuffs, or other useless & 
superfluous Things, and in order Thereunto, that all Taylors pro- 
fessing Truth be dealt with and advised Accordingly. 

Also advised, " That all Superfluity & Excess in 
Buildings and Furniture be avoided for time to come." 

Change had to come among the Quakers, however, 
as it had in the world. By the middle of the eighteenth 
century the country folk were following more closely in 
the wake of the town. " Fifty years ago," says a writer 
in 1761, " the dress of people in distant counties was no 
more like those in town than Turkish or Chinese. But 
now in the course of a tour you will not meet with a 
high crowned hat, or a pair of red stockings." Miss Hill 
goes on to say: 

The high crowned hat was pretty well confined to the Quak- 
ers, who were as noticeable for the neatness as for the old- 
fashioned cut of their garments. Their linen was always fine 
and clean, and the quality of their sober colored coats and gowns 
was of the best. The most rigid discarded all additions which 
could in any be described as ornaments, even to the buttons 
with which it was the fashion to loop up the hats. The men's 
hats were lower and wider brimmed than the women's, which 
were of the regular steeple shape. Quakers, of course, did not 
wear wigs.* 

Upon the matter of wigs we must correct Miss Hill. 
Many Quakers wore them, including William Penn. 

In August, 1787, the London " Chronicle " published 
a satirical paragraph of advice to a man of fashion rela- 
tive to correct costume for seaside wear: 

For the morning, provide yourself with a very large round 
hat. This will preserve your face from the sun and wind, both 
of which are very prejudicial to the complexion. Let your hair 

*Hill, •• History of English Dress." Vol. II., p. 167. 



34 THE QUAKER. 

be well filled with pomatum, powder and bear's grease, and tuck 
it under your hat. Have an enormous chitterling * to your 
shirt, the broader the better, and pull it up to look as like the 
pouter pigeon as you possibly can. A white waistcoat without 
skirts, and a coat with a collar up to your ears will do for an 
early hour; and if they say your head looks like that of John 
the Baptist on a charger, tell them you are not ashamed to look 
like an Apostle, what ever they are! Your first appearance 
must be in red morocco slippers with yellow heels; your second 
in shoes with the Vandyke tie; your third in Cordovan boots, 
with very long rowelled spurs, which are very useful to walk 
in; for if you tear a lady's apron, it gives you a good oppor- 
tunity of showing how gracefully you can ask pardon. Your 
fourth dress must be the three cornered hat, the Paris pump, 
and the Artois buckle.f 

The foregoing is valuable as showing how far dress 
had become modern in 1787. 

Red heels were worn under Louis XIV., and in the 
time of Louis XV. these were made of wood in bright 
red at Court, and were considered a great mark of gen- 
tility.:]: Shoe buckles adorn the shoes of Louis XIV. in 
his portrait by Eigaud in the Louvre, painted in 1701; 
they came into England in the reign of William III., 
and by the end of the eighteenth century were enor- 
mous. Then came the French Revolution, which 
affected even shoe buckles, and they were supplanted by 
ribbons or strings. The American Quaker sea-captain, 
John M. Whit all, who visited England in 1819, relates 
that he wanted to go to meeting in Liverpool, and had 
a struggle in mind over putting leather strings in his 
shoes, instead of the worldly ribbons he would have had 
to buy. But he did not "gratify pride" to that extent !§ 

* A ruffled front, falling from the neck. 

fHill, •' History of English Dress." Vol. II., p. 128. 

t Quicherat, " Histoire de Costume en France," p. 562. 

2 Hannah W. Smith, " Diary of John M. Whitall," p. 107. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



35 



Men in 1786 carried enormous muffs. These had a 
ribbon attached to suspend them from the neck, with a 
bow of ribbon tied in the center. The beau went about 
encumbered with this, a sword and a very long cane, no 
doubt with the " very jantee '' air that the old books 
refer to as the sine qua non of the modish gentleman of 
two hundred years ago. Muffs had come to America 
as early as 1638. Dr. Thomas Prence, in Boston, in 
1725, lost his "black bear-skin muff"; and several 
muffs were left by will in ]^ew York in 1783.* An old 
French print shows a " Quaquer d' Amsterdam " in the 
dress of William Penn, carrying an enormous muff. 
Buttons of great size adorned everything possible un- \/ 
der Charles the Second, and paint and " patches " pre- 
vailed. The riding-coats of this period were red, but in 
1786 we find them green, with enor- 
mous mother-of-pearl buttons. It was 
about this time that a Frenchman in 
Philadelphia wrote that on a certain 
day in September the Quakers in that 
town " put on worsted stockings to a 
man ! " f 

In the first years of the nineteenth 
century the worldly coat took on the 
cut-away effect seen in portraits of 
Jeffersonian times; and here we have 
the origin of the modern " plain coat," 
which is in reality a nondescript affair, 
being, as to its collar, a survival of 
the coat of Penn, who, however. 




1818. 

(After Martin.) 



* Alice Morse Earle, " Costume of Colonial Days," p. 164. 
t Elizabeth Drinker, Journal. 



36 TEE QUAKER. 

would have been horrified at its height; and as to 
its tail, an early nineteenth century mode. Some- 
thing in its shape appealed to an American wag 
long ago, who, struck by its resemblance to the fish 
familiar to our shores, dubbed it the " shad ! " 
Had it been possible, the Quakers would doubt- 
less still have clung to the early style of dress, but 
their bravest efforts were of no avail. The coat of Wil- 
liam Penn had no collar whatever, as we have seen. 
There came a time when the worldly coat rose straight 
up to a line behind the ears, and the neckcloth passed in 
many folds about the choked and gasping neck, tilting 
the chin, for air and ease, to a point which carried the 
nose upward and gave the beaux of the period a most 
supercilious air. The familiar portrait of Robespierre 
will illustrate this, when all the gentlemen of England 
were aping the fashions of the Directoire. Presently, 
because it could rise no higher, the worldly coat-collar 
dropped over in a roll, and the neck was released from 
all its swaddling bands of cambric. The Quaker stopped 
at this point; he had followed the fashion a quarter of 
a century behind, it is true, but still followed, his coat 
collar creeping up by imperceptible degrees until the 
middle of the nineteenth century. At the present time 
only a faithful few are left to struggle against the in- 
evitable roll, and these few are in America, Friends in 
the mother country having ceased to observe an obso- 
lete convention. It took the coat collar a full two hun- 
dred years to rise to its greatest height and fall in the 
snare of a worldly roll — what more natural than that 
the Quaker collar should be as long in rolling ? 

Seventy-five years ago trousers were among the 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 37 

things viewed by conservative Quakers with very grave 
suspicion. The evolution of the '^ pantalon/' its rise, 
name, origin and effect are described by Quicherat.* 
The garment seems to have come from Venice in the 
sixteenth century. The Venetians were called " Pan- 
taloni " in upper Italy, and the Italian comedians intro- 
duced the garment in France, in fantasy and ballets. 
The court of Louis XIII. danced " en pantalon," as did 
Richelieu himself, for the edification of Anne of Aus- 
tria. The breeches were first lengthened to the calf, 
meeting the reversed boot-top, but trousers did not be- 
come popular at that time for stout wear, because the 
supreme hour had not yet come in which to discard the 
boot. Without attempting to dwell on the history of 
the most modern garment worn, it may be as well to re- 
mind ourselves that trunk hose had just been succeeded 
in Fox's time by breeches to the knee, adorned with 
fringe and ribbon; "petticoat breeches," frilled and 
voluminous, having been a short-lived mode. What 
George Fox would have done with trunk hose it would 
be interesting to know! At their height a law was 
necessary forbidding a man to carry " bags stuffed in 
his sacks '' — a mild form of smuggling. A person be- 
fore a court justice, when charged by the judges with 
being habited contrary to the statute, convinced them 
that the stuffing was not composed of any prohibited 
article, inasmuch as it " contained merely a pair of 
sheets, two tablecloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, 
a comb and a nightcap ! " f 

By the end of the eighteenth century there was a 
growing plainness in men's dress, and Charles James 

* Quicherat, " Histoire de Costume en France," p. 480. 

t " The Book of Costume. By a Lady of Quality." London, 1846. 



38 THE QUAKER. 

Fox and his friends in tlie House of Commons aided its 
coming. 13 May, 1807, one Hamilton, at Balliol Col- 
lege, Oxford, wrote : " 'No boots are allowed to be 
worn here, or trousers or pantaloons. In the morning 
we wear white stockings, and before dinner, regularly 
dress in silk stockings," etc. In 1808 the " trousered 
beau " was present. He had before this worn silk stock- 
ings, velvet knee breeches, powdered wig, cocked hat 
and sword.* All through the eighteenth century 
Quakers wore knee breeches, with silk or yarn stock- 
ings, according to their circumstances in life, and low 
shoes or riding boots. It is interesting to learn from 
Miss Hill that knit stockings were only worn some fifty 
years before Fox was born. They had before been of 
cloth or continuous with the clothing, as in the days of 
trunk hose. Pepys' stockings were of silk and wool. 
When the " pantalon " arrived from Italy, the first 
were of plain light cloth, fitting very tightly. By 1830 
they were much as they have since remained, the ^^ cos- 
sack " shape being the transition, reminding us of Dr. 
Holmes' lines : 

They have a certain dignity that frequently appals, 
Those mediaeval gentlemen, in semi-lunar smalls. 

" French Pantaloons '' are advertised in a Philadel- 
phia newspaper of 1828. 

In 1798 Mrs. Lloyd wrote to her son Robert, who 
had gone up to London to visit his friend Charles Lamb : 

I was gi-ieved to hear of thy appearing in those fantastical 
trousers in London. 1 am clear such eccentricities of dress would 
only make thee laughed at by the world, whilst thy sincere 
friends would be deeply hurt. . . . Neither thy mind nor person 
are formed for eccentricities of dress or conduct.f 

* Hill, " History of English Dress." Vol. II., p. 233. 
IE. V. Lucas, " Charles Lamb and the Lloyds," p. 97. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 39 

Robert Lloyd, in 1809, wrote to his wife: 

Pray dispatch me from the Dog Inn at seven o'clock in the 
evening, 2 pair of White Silk stockings. 1 must go smart to 
the Opera. I have ordered a pair of dress-clothes in London. 

His "brotlier Charles inquires of him about the same 
time: 

If Hessian boots would do to wear with pantaloons or small 
clothes indiscriminately, I should prefer them, but not without.* 

The Lloyds were of Quaker stock, and a charmingly 
cultivated family, to whom the friendship of Charles 
Lamb was sure testimony of wit and culture. They did 
not remain in the circle of Quakers, but intermarried 
with the Wordsworths, and from them sprang three 
Bishops and an Archbishop of the Established Church ! 

The English Quakers, however, were not alone in 
their dread of the new fashion. 

When Mr. Jefferson discarded his short breeches, silk stockings 
and low shoes with silver buckles, and concealed his well-formed 
legs in pantaloons, the Federalists were prone to regard it as 
the trick of a demagogue to secure favor with the mob. A 
gentleman in trousers and short hair! But what better could 
be thought or expected of a Democrat an^ an atheist? 

In 1867, folks forty years old could remember the high stock, 
cruel shirt collar, ruthless coat-collar, the prodigious bonnet and 
general severity of costume before Channing, Dickens, Beecher, 
and the New York " Tribune " had begun to emancipate the 
American understanding from its tight fitting armor of opinion.f 

Mrs. Earle tells us that the colonists of Massachusetts 
Bay landed, some in doublet and hose, and some in coat 
and breeches. The fact is interesting to the student 
of Quaker dress, for it is another evidence that there 
must have been great variety of costume among the 

*Ibid.,p. 268. 

t James Parton, " The Clothes Mania." 



40 THE QUAKER. 

different classes of society in England in the seven- 
teenth century. The first mention of trousers in this 
country was in 1776, although they are possibly the 
" tongs *' or " tushes " of 1638. The garment was at 
first put to the use of what we now call overalls. The 
Pilgrim men wore buff breeches, red waistcoats, and 
green or sad-colored " mandillions.^' * The indignant 
Stubbes was also moved to inveigh against " man- 
dillions '' in a passage that gives a perfect picture of the 
coat and jerkins of the late sixteenth and early seven- 
teenth centuries. He says: 

Their coates and ierkis, as they be diuers in colours, so be 
they diuers in fashions; for some be made with coUors, some 
without, some close to the body, some loose, which they cal 
mandilians, couering the whole body down to the thigh, like 
bags or sacks, that were drawne ouer them, hiding the dimen- 
sions and lineaments of the body; some are buttoned down the 
breast, some vnder the arme, and some down the backe, some 
with flaps ouer the brest, some without ; some with great sleeues, 
some Vv'ith small, some with none at all; some pleated and 
crested behinde and curiously gathered, some not; and how many 
dayes ( I might saye houres or minutes of houres in the yeare) 
so many sortes of apparell some one man will haue, and think- 
eth it good prouision in fayre weather to lay vp agaynst a 
storrae.f 

Doublet and hose were worn more in the Southern 
colonies than in JSTew England, and were richer in ma- 
terial. In the list of '' apparel for 100 men," of the 
Massachusetts Bay Company, Mrs. Earle tells us that 
doublet and hose may be found in 1628, but they had 
disappeared in 'New England by 1635. The doublet 
was worn in England also by women in 1666, to the 

* " ' Mandillions,' a sort of doublet, fastened with hooks and eyes, 
and lined with cotton." — Alice Morse Earle, *' Costume of Colonial Times,*' 
p. 218. 

t Philip Stubbes, " Anatomic of Abuses." Ed. 1586, p. 49. 



^^^^^ 



Elias Hicks, 1748-1830. 

Frojn a silhouette. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 41 

scandal of our friend, Mr. Pepys. As has been noted, 
George Fox wore tlie doublet all bis life. What was 
known as " hair camlet '^ seems to have been a fashion- 
able material among the plainer Friends for coats, while 
the gayer, or, as the phrase went, " the finer sort," 
wore velvet of various colors. John Smith, of Burling- 
ton, 'New Jersey, going to " pass meeting " for the first 
time previous to his marriage with Hannah, the daugh- 
ter of James Logan, of Pennsylvania, 28th of Eighth 
month, 1748, wrote in his diary, " I put on a new suit 
of hair camlet." * 

The dress of Jonathan Kirkbride, of Pennsylvania, 
born in 1739, is thus described by a descendant, and the 
description may be taken as that of many Quakers of 
the middle of the last century. Its cut is much like 
that of Elias Hicks. 

During his preaching expeditions, he went out mounted on a 
pacing horse, a pair of leather saddle-bags, containing his ward- 
robe, hung behind the saddle, a silk oil-cloth cover for his hat, 
and an oilcloth cape over the shoulders, which came down nearly 
to the saddle, as a protection from storms. Stout corduroy 
overalls, with rows of buttons down the outside to close them 
on, protected the breeches and stockings. A light walking stick 
did double duty, as a cane when on foot, and a riding whip when 
mounted. . . . 

He wore a black beaver hat, with a broad brim turned up at 
the sides so as to form a point in front and rolled up behind; a 
drab coat, with broad skirts reaching to the knee, with a low 
standing collar; a coUarless waistcoat, bound at the neck, reach- 
ing beyond the hips, with broad pockets, and pocket flaps over 
them; a white cravat served for a collar; breeches with an open- 
ing a few inches above and below the knee, closed with a row 
of buttons and a silver buckle at the bottom; ample silver 
buckles to fasten the shoes with ; fine yarn stockings. . . . 

In winter, shoes gave place to high boots, reaching to the 
knee in front, and cut lower behind to accommodate the limb. 

*"The Burlington Smiths," by R. Morris Smith, p. 153. 



42 TEE QUAKER, 

When he adopted pantaloons^ with great reluctance, 
just before his death, at an advanced age, he com- 
plained of their feeling " so ^ slawny/ flapping about 
the ankles ! '' * 

The men Friends of the early nineteenth century 
wore for an overcoat a long collarless garment of heavy 
cloth, like Gay's 

True Witney broadcloth, with its shag unshorn, 
which was usually known among them as a ^' surtout,'' 
worldly French name though it was ! 

That garment best the winter's rage defends 
Whose ample form without one plait depends; 
By various names, in various countries known 
Yet held in all the true surtout alone. 
Be thine of kersey firm, though small the cost; 
Then brave unwet the rain, unchill'd the frost.f 

Possibly none clung to knee breeches longer than 

some of the Quakers in America, and the last instance 

that I have found is that of Richard Mott, who for 

forty years was clerk of New York Yearly Meeting, 

and who died in 1856. His daughter-in-law writes, in 

a letter preserved among old family papers: 

Mother Mott is better again. She is making [him] a pair of 
pantaloons, and I am helping her. The men have nearly all got 
to wearing them now, and he looks and feels so singular in his 
" smalls," that he could not stand it any longer, but bought 
some beautiful cloth in New York for the purpose.^ 

Sometimes it is not clear what particular point in the 
costume was criticized, as at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 
whose Records say: 

*Mahlon S. Kirkbride, "Domestic Portraiture of our Ancestors 
Kirkbride ; 1650-1824." 

tGay, "Trivia." 

j Hannah B. Mott to her mother, Hannah Smith, from Mamaroneck, 
N. Y.,8mo. 23,1828. 



Stephen Grellet, 1773-18^^, 

From a silhouette. 




:.^/^-: 



y:±'4^f^^, 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 43 

27th. 1 mo. 1722; "The visitors give account that they have 
been with B. S. who is gone from ye order of Friends into ye 
fashion of ye world in his apparel, who signified that he is re- 
solved to have his own way. 

Benjamin, we learn, was disowned; but tRe minutes 
are silent as to what lie wore, which we should very 
much like to know. A rather more serious case was 
that of C. G., Jr., who on the 15th of Third month, 
1756, " made an attempt to lay his intentions of mar- 
riage before the Preparative Meeting at Acoaxet & was 
not admitted by reason of his wearing fashionable 
clothes." He was labored with by the Friends, but re- 
fused to change his worldly apparel, married " out of 
the order,'' and was eventually disowned. 

At Nantucket, Massachusetts, 1801, L H 

was disowned for " deviating from our principles in 
dress and address." We find that he persisted in wear- 
ing buckles, and refused to use " thee " and '^ thou." 
In 1803, at the same meeting, it is recorded that 

H C " had deviated in dress and address from 

the plainness of our Profession." * 

The inventory of the household goods and clothing 
of Benjamin Lay, the extraordinary Anti-Slavery 
Quaker of Pennsylvania, is still in existence; and this 
curious and unique account is sufficiently instructive to 
warrant its partial reproduction. It will be noted that 
the list includes " britches " and trousers, the former 
of leather in several cases,f as well as a " skin coat," 
and jacket of the same leather as the " britches.'' Vari- 
ous cloaks and riding hoods, and seven or eight other 

* Worth, ** Nantucket Friends' Meetings." 

t William Strypers in 1685, had "two pair of leather breeches, two 
leather doublets, handkerchiefs, stockings, and a new hat." This consti- 
tuted the outfit of the Dutchman, when he settled in Germantown, Pa., at 
that date. " Settlement of Germantown," by Judge Pennypacker, p. 128. 



44 THE QUAKER. 

hoods ill white or black, had evidently belonged to his 
wife, whose death took place some years before that of 
her husband, in lT42. Sarah Lay was also a little 
hunchback, an English woman, and an acknowledged 
minister in the Society of Friends, who accompanied 
her husband when he first came to America in 1731. 
She evidently had not been ensnared by so worldly a 
fashion as the bonnet, which was far from the thoughts 
of the good Quakeress of that date. The few items that 
follow are selected from the original manuscript with 
an eye to the style of garments worn by the Lays. 
Benjamin Lay died Second month 3d, 1759, aged 82. 
The sale (or " vendue," as the document reads) oc- 
curred the next month, and fills fifteen folio pages of 
description. £68 I7s. Id. were realized. The list in- 
cludes one hundred and twenty-five books, mostly 
Friends', a copy of Plutarch's Lives, etc. His home was 
near Abington, Pa. The last rather startling item in 
this list evidently refers to a piece of damaged goods I 

Inventory of Clothing 

OF 

Benjamin Lay, of Pennsylvania, 
Died 2 mo. 3rd. 1759. 

s d 

Coat and Jacket 2 6 

Buckrim Coat 4 

2 Jackets and a frok 1 2 

Plush coat 9 7 

Pare of Leather Britches 3 11 

Leather Jacket 5 

4 1 

« 1 8 

Skin Coat 3 

Pare of Shoos 6 6 

Coat and Hat 1 1 

Bag and pare of Cloth boots 2 5 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



45 



s d 

Leather Jacot 10 3 

Coaf 1 6 

Pare of Britches 11 6 

4 

Trunk 2 

Qoke 1 6 

A Hide and cloke 1 6 

2 flanell petty cote 3 3 

Clock [cloak] and riding-hood 2 4 

Petecoat 3 1 

Crap gound [cr^pe gown] 3 1 

Calleminco gound 4 6 

Camblit " 1 1 

Quilted petecoat 10 1 

Winder curtins 1 11 

Black silk scarf 1 18 

Ditto 1 17 1 

Black silk scarf 18 

Black hood 11 

Whit silk " 3 9 

A " " " 5 

Ditto 4 1 

A silk handkerchief 7 

Ditto 2 9 

A silk handkerchief 7 

pare of, silk gloves 5 

" " gloves 1 10 

A whit hood" 2 3 

" linen " 1 4 

Ditto 2 

2 muslin handkerchiefs 4 

A whit hood 3 

« «< 4 

3 " aprons 5 

Pocket handkerchief 5 

6 caps 4 9 

" " 4 8 

10 " 5 3 

3 cambric handkerchiefs 4 4 

8 pinners 7 

A checkard apron 2 3 



46 TEE QUAKER. 

3 d 

20 neck cloths 4 3 

sundry mittens 2 3 

a green apron 2 

Ditto 2 4 

a pare of pockets 1 

3 pare worsted stocks 4 7 

1 dimity wastecoat & 2 shifts 18 

12 diaper napkins & 2 table-cloths 3 10 
Besides shirts, stockings, gloves, " 17 shifts/' 12 table-cloths, 

towels, napkins, sheets, pillow-cases, " curtins," " a hammack," 

quilts, " vallians," etc., " to numerous to mention." 
Also, a variety of dry-goods in the piece, 40 lbs. whalebone, 

thimbles, needles, buttons, 12,000 pins, stay -tape, 1 doz. flints; 

and finally, " 8 yards of damnified ozonbriggs ! "* 

The dress of !N^icholas Biddle is described hj the 
rrenchman, M. de Bacourt, so late as 1840, as " a blue 
coat with brass buttons, yellow nankeen pantaloons, 
canary colored gloves, and a glossy beaver.'' The same 
M. de Bacourt is said to have made the mot^ that the 
" world is ruled by three boxes — the ballot-box, the 
cartridge-box, and the band-box ! " 

The only title of honor recognized by Friends seems 
to have been that of Doctor. The ills of the flesh were 
so heavy in the days before the use of modern methods 
of healing, that the physician who could in any way 
alleviate suffering was made welcome for his kindly 
services, and his title was generally given him. Eng- 
land was far behind Holland in the healing art, and 
Friends went to the Netherlands, where Leyden was 
famous in science and learning, to study medicine. A 
flourishing body of Quakers already existed in Amster- 
dam. Anatomy and physiology were taught with 

*Ozonbrigg — One of the many materials with Eastern or other 
curious names, so much in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
Spelt also Oznaburg, Ozenbridge, etc. ; originally made at Osnabriick, 
Hanover. Linen. (Alice Morse Earle.) 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 4.7 

Dutch thoroughness, and Rembrandt's great painting, 
" The Anatomist/' was a correct representation of the 
scientific training which that nation was giving to the 
whole world. The Doctor, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, was a great social personage. His power and his 
presence were only second to that of a great church 
dignitary. E'o one ever questioned his authority on 
any point, and to his utterances the people paid great 
heed. He had but just stepped over that mysterious 
borderland lying between mystery and science, and to 
the unlettered of his day, his knowledge was hardly to 
be attained without supernatural means. Both on the 
continent and in England he wore a distinctive dress. 
The black cloth garb was quite clerical in effect, and 
the great bush wig was invariably accompanied by a 
gold-headed cane. Portraits of Doctors Fothergill and 
Lettsom, both very eminent men, and both Quakers, 
show them in clothing of rather lighter hue, but with 
the adjuncts of cocked hat, wig and cane. The Quaker 
profession in England maintained the courtesy and the 
garb without, however, any of its exaggerations; and 
respect for their calling led them to wear the wig 
throughout the period of its history — a motive which 
did them honor, although, at this date, we may not be 
able to recognize any added sentiment of beauty or 
dignity in that adornment. 

In America, democratic as it was — and yet most con- 
servative, so far as adhering to a style of dress is con- 
cerned — the wig was not considered de rigueur among 
Friends, where its adoption, with Doctors, as with 
other mortals, was entirely a matter of taste. We can 
therefore the better understand Ann Warder's aston- 



48 TEE QUAKER. 

isliment at the appearance of a Doctor in Philadelphia, 
wearing none of the insignia of his profession. She 
writes, in 1786, " We dined at Mcholas Wain's in com- 
pany with there sisters and two public Friends." (A 
usual term for minister among the Quakers.) " One, 
I understood, was a country Physician, but how would 
he look by the side of ours, instead of a great Bush 
Wig, and everything answerable, his Dress was as hum- 
ble as possible." At meeting, the next day: " The 
Doctor I mentioned yesterday appeared beautifully " ; 
that is, he preached or prayed acceptably to his audi- 
ence. The Doctor of Divinity also shared in a pro- 
fessional costume as he does now, and this lends mean- 
ing to the note of Thomas Story, who in 1Y17, at Rad- 
nor, Pennsylvania, in describing meetings he had held 
at that place, says: '^ We heard also of a Doctor of 
Divinity in one of our meetings, disguised in a blue 
coat; but not of any objections made." * 

The new thing, whatever it might be, was viewed 
askance by Quakerism, which, in America, at least, was 
never more fearful of innovations than during the 
period immediately succeeding the departure of the 
Quakers from the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1756. 
They withdrew from active life, a,nd paid more atten- 
tion to the limitations of dress and custom among their 
membership, and this grew upon them with the passing 
years. Richard Talbot, of Ohio, was visited by Friends 
of his Yearly Meeting for putting on suspenders ; and 
umbrellas caused many anxious moments when they 
were introduced among the Friends. The first um- 
brella carried in Edinburgh was borne by Alexander 

♦Thomas story, Journal, p. 573. (Folio.) 



A STUDT IN COSTUME, 49 

Wood, a surgeon, in 1782. It was a huge gingham ap- 
paratus, clumsy and awkward to a degree. It was also a 
surgeon who the following year carried a yellow glazed 
linen umbrella down Glasgow streets, justly proud of 
the new importation from Paris. Before this, huge 
green paper fans were employed as a protection from 
the sun, while the rainy-day deyices were many. Jonas 
Hanway, however, although he has the credit of carry- 
ing the first umbrella in London, in 1756, must now 
give way to a Philadelphia Quaker, for on February 
20, 1738, an "umberella" was imported to Philadelphia 
in the good ship " Constantine,'' as shown by the in- 
voice, for the " proper account and risque '' of Edward 
Shippen, who, indeed, for aught we know, may have 
worn out that nine shilling umbrella long before Jonas 
Hanway carried his.* l^athaniel J^ewlin carried the 
first umbrella to Chester (Pa.) Meeting, and to this 
evidence of a worldly spirit Priends took great excep- 
tion, and made remonstrance, although JsTathaniel was 
a person of weight, and had sat six times in the Penn- 
sylvania Assembly. 

As for the women, they had long been used to fol- 
lowing the advice of Gay: 

Good housewives all the winter's rage despise, 

Defended by the riding hood's disguise; 

but it was considered a very feminine and unmanly per- 
formance at first to be seen carrying an umbrella, and 
only women might 

Underneath the umbrella's oily shed, 
Safe through the wet on clinking patten tread. 
Let Persian dames the umbrella's ribs display. 
To guard their beauties from the sunny ray; 

*" Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography." Jan., 1901. 



50 THE QUAKER. 

Or sweating slaves support the shady load, 
When Eastern monarchs show their state abroad. 
Britain in winter only knows its aid, 
To guard from chilling showers the walking maid.* 

The grandmother of the Philadelphia lady who 
vouches for the following had a no less thrilling ex- 
perience in the attempt to be in the mode than had 
ISTathaniel E^ewlin. During her girlhood her father 
brought her an umbrella. She carried the novel 
gift with great pleasure and delight, but so new and 
unknown was the article that the meeting to which she 
belonged became alarmed and the Overseers dealt with 
the worldly-minded father. During the controversy 
one woman Friend said to the young girl, " Miriam, 
would thee want that held over thee when thee was 
a-dyin' ? " That of course settled the matter, and the 
offending umbrella was relegated to seclusion. Many 
present necessities of the toilet were unknown luxuries 
in the early days. We are told that in 1650 Sir Ralph 
Yerney sent to a friend a present of " teeth-brushes and 
boxes," which were new-fangled Parisian articles, called 
by him, " inconsiderable toyes.'' f 

There are few more sensitive souls than that of sweet 
and tender John Woolman, to read whom in these sor- 
did days is like a breath from the Elysian Fields. We 
could not all find it possible, or even our duty, to live 
so near his ideal; for to few human beings is it given 
to so completely sever their connection with the world, 
and the things of the world. Nevertheless, there is no 
more salutary reading for these strenuous days than 
the small but precious contribution made by John 

*" Trivia." 

tGeorgiana Hill, " Women in English Life." Vol. I., p. 158. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 51 

Woolman to the body of English literature. He is here 
named because of the travail of soul that he endured 
over his clothes; for to him, poor dear, the dye in his 
garments was as great an object of uneasiness of spirit 
as the lack of it would have been to William Penn ! He 
tells us in his Journal, that amazing record of a soul's 
experience, that " the thought of wearing hats and gar- 
ments dyed with a dye hurtful to them, had made a last- 
ing impression on me." This was in the year 1760, 
when the Quaker tailor was just forty years old, and his 
calling had led him to see the vanities of men rather 
intimately. 

This, and the wearing more clothes in summer than are need- 
ful, grew weary to me, believing them to be customs which have 
not their foundation in pure wisdom. The apprehension of being 
singular from my beloved friends was a strait upon me; and thus 
I continued in the use of some things contrary to my judgment. 

But our Journalist fell ill and in the depths he re- 
cords his mind brought into a state of perfect submis- 
sion to the will of God, as he interpreted it. For nine 
months he continued to wear out the garments he had 
already in use, and then his first move in the direction 
of the new reform was to buy an undyed hat. 

I thought of getting a hat the natural color of the fur, but 
the apprehension of being looked upon as one affecting singular- 
ity felt uneasy to me. Here I had occasion to consider that 
things, though small in themselves, being clearly enjoined by Di- 
vine authority, become great things to us; and I trusted that the 
Lord would support me in the trials that might attend singular- 
ity, so long as singularity was only for His sake. On this ac- 
count I was under close exercise of mind in the time of our Gen- 
eral Spring Meeting, 1762, greatly desiring to be rightly directed; 
when, being deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, I was made 
willing to submit to what I apprehended was required of me, 
and when I returned home got a hat the natural color of the fur. 



52 THE QUAKER. 

"No portrait, alas, exists of John Woolman, but this 

lets us know that his hat was a beaver of the natural 

color. Doubtless he would never have consented to 

have his ^' counterfeit presentment " taken. He had 

some mental stress because of this step, for he adds that 

after this, 

In attending meetings, this singularity was a trial to me, and 
more especially at this time, as white hats were used by some 
who were fond of following the changeable modes of dress, and 
as some Friends who knew not from what motives I wore it 
grew shy of me, I felt my way for a time shut up in the exer- 
cise of the ministry. . . . My heart was often tender in meetings, 
and I felt an inward consolation which to me was very precious 
under these difficulties. Some Friends were afraid that my wear- 
ing such a hat savored of an affected singularity; those who 
spoke with me in a friendly way, I generally informed, in a few 
words, that I believed ray wearing it was not in my own will. 
I had at times been sensible that a superficial friendship had been 
dangerous to me; and many Friends being now uneasy with me, 
I had an inclination to acquaint some with the manner of my 
being led into these things; yet upon a deeper thought I was 
for a time most easy to omit it, believing the present dispensa- 
tion was profitable, and trusting that if I kept my place, the 
Lord in His own time would open the hearts of Friends toward 
me. I have since had cause to admire His goodness and loving 
kindness in leading about and instructing me, and in opening and 
enlarging my heart in some of our meetings. 

Surely nothing could be more beautiful than the 
spirit here shown, although a practical mind might find 
some criticisms possible. But if all the Friends to-day 
bought their hats and bonnets in the same spirit, it 
would surely not be long before the Society of Friends 
again became a power in the world. Shall any one here- 
after say that there is nothing of philosophy in clothes ? 
The Quaker custom of self-examination and comparison 
with the ideal life, and a disparagement of native gifts 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 53 

and talent, made the humility in which the Quaker was 
*^ clothed as with a garment," and which he seldom 
ceased in the last century to recommend, take on some- 
times a melancholy hue. 

Aggressive as the Quaker garb would seem to have 
been upon a superficial glance at the situation, it will be 
found that the sect made no effort to force their pecu- 
liarities upon the public, nor have they ever done so. 
They and their hats became conspicuous by force of cir- 
cumstances, and of course were at once in the public 
eye. They did not preach Quaker, but only plain 
dressing; and they would at first have denied their pub- 
lic position on the subject had they been given the 
choice. The Quakers have always had the good sense 
to hold quite in the background their views on dress, 
when they have gone out as missionaries to what we are 
pleased to call " the heathen." And herein they have 
been wise in their generation. How much good would 
they have accomplished, for instance, by insisting that 
a Hindu woman should at once put on the plain bon- 
net ? It is quite as reasonable to expect the Quakers to 
adopt the Chinese dress, as, indeed, more than one has 
done. There is a beauty of line in certain forms that 
Quaker dress has taken, that is pleasing to the artist, 
and possesses still more attraction for the moralist or 
historian. It is hardly perceptible to him who is un- 
familiar with Quaker history. The modern idea of 
beauty in dress is no longer one of personal adornment, 
but there is a moral quality that enters into it, which is 
quite the product of the last three hundred years. The 
merely decorative element is one that has always ap- 
pealed to the savage on the plains, or in Central Africa. 



54 TEE QUAKER. 

The purely aesthetic side of dress was present to the 
Greek as never before or since; and to the Knight in 
armor came a sense of protection together with the ap- 
peal to his prowess. But it is only of late years that we 
have had a conscience in our clothes; and what is beau- 
tiful must now stimulate our feeling for the best and 
truest. We do not object to the peculiarities of the 
Quaker garb as did the public in Oliver Cromwell's day, 
to whom it was offensive because an implied reproach. 
But we see in it the memory of martyr and saint and 
hero, and we suffer it, because to us it stands as a sym- 
bol of some of the qualities for which the human soul 
has greatest need. A feeling of sadness creeps over our 
mind that its history has become altogether that of the 
past. 




Sunshade. 1760. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE HAT. 



Any Cappe, whate'er it be. 

Is still the signe of some Degre. 

" Ballad of the Caps;* 1656. 

Ne dit-on pas qu'il ne faut pas penser avoir toutes ses 
encemonde? 

Lois de la Galanterie. 



CHAPTEK n. 




THE SPIKIT OF THE HAT. 

WO hats in the history of the church 
stand forth conspicuous from the 
mass. In shape they are not unlike. 
The oldest has a round crown, and 
plain wide brim, and is unadorned 
save for cord and tassel. Gorgeous 
in brilliant red, it typifies churchly 
prestige and power; and the car- 
dinal who wears it is a functionary of what has been 
the most powerful church organization on the face of 
the earth. To but one other hat has ever attached so 
much religious significance. That is the drab broad- 
brim of the early Quaker. How many controversies 
have been waged, how many hard words flung over 
the apparently simple matter of the hat! On this 
futile subject we have had countless tracts, pamphlets 
and sermons; while lawsuits, loss of property and loss 
of life are all on record. The spiritual welfare of an 
entire sect has at one time seemed to depend on the 
manner of wearing the covering for the head. The 
whole " testimony " of the early Quaker against the 
frivolities of his day was concentrated in his hat. 

It is important to remember that the period was but 
just past when this had been a part of the costume, no 
m.ore to be removed when entering the house or seated 
at table than the shoes or doublet. Hats were worn in 



58 THE QUAKER. 

church, and the clergy preached in them. The elegant 
courtiers at the French and English courts were now 
beginning to greet the ladies and their superiors in rank 
with the new sweeping bow — " making a leg," as it was 
termed — ^with consummate grace and art, the hat's 
long, graceful feather sweeping the floor in the action. 
This is not a Parisian fashion book, nor yet a history 
of worldly costume; nevertheless, we must seek the 
origin of the Quaker hat among the abodes of fashion. 
This part of the costume has a very interesting history, 
and might in itself fill a good-sized volume. The felt 
hat with which we are chiefly concerned goes back to 
the time of the early Greeks. There is a felt hat on a 
statue of Endymion in the British Museum. The Nor- 
mans at the conquest wore hats of the same durable 
material, and we love the " flaundrish bever hat " of the 
Merchant, in the Canterbury Tales. Among the 
peasantry of the seventeenth century, the old English 
and Scotch " bonnets " were worn, usually of cloth or 
other heavy stuff, low and broad in shape; while at all 
times in the early history of England some variety of 
the hood was to be found among both sexes alike. 
Chaucer's Eeve was rewarded by his master with 
" thanks, a cote and hood " ; and the Monk— 
" For to fasten his hood under his chinne, 
He had of gold ywrought, a curious pinne." 

At the coronation of Anne Boleyn, the Aldermen 
" toke their hoddes from their necks, and cast them 
about their shoulders." * The old time-honored bonnet 
had been superseded by the hat in the early sixteenth 
century; and in the reign of Henry VIIL, we find cer- 
tain old prints that give us the jaunty hat always asso- 
* Archseologia, Vol. XXIV., p. 172. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



59 



ciated with that monarch, showing the hood still worn 
underneath it, or thrown over the shoulder. Felt hats 
had been found most durable for soldiers' wear, and 
their lasting qualities made them popular with the com- 
mon people. Ashton tells us that a new-fashioned 
beaver hat, sometimes called felt and made by the 
Dutch, came in about 1559. 
They were afterward made in 
England by the Dutch refu- 
gees at Wandsworth, and were 
a luxury only to be afforded by 
fine gentlemen. A good hat 
was very expensive, and im- 
portant enough to be left 
among bequests in a will. 
They were borrowed and hired 
for many years, and even down 
to the time of Queen Anne, we 
find the rent of a subscription 
hat to be two pounds six shil- 
lings per annum! There must have been great peace 
and harmony in the wearing of that hat, one would 
think ! In the time of Elizabeth beaver hats were an ex- 
travagant luxury, and " were fetched from beyond the 
seas, where a great sort of other varieties do come be- 
side." The hats were small at first, and one old writer 

says : « So propre cappes, 

So lytle hattes. 
And so false hartes 
Saw y never." * 

The " hattes " soon grew as broad as that of the Wife 
of Bath, and were known as ^' castors." The print of a 




Douglas, Earl of Morton. 
1553. 

(After Repton.) 



" Maner of the World Now-a-Days." 




60 THE QUAKER. 

fashionable man of 1652 has the hat-brim extending 
horizontally, with a long drooping feather, threatening 

to fall. This was the hat of 
Charles the First, which has 
since come down to us as 
the Quaker broad-brim. The 
Hat of Charles I. steeple - crowned hat of 

(After Martin.) JamCS I. Still CxistS in 

beaver in Wales, worn by both men and women, the 
latter placing it over the hood or cap in the manner of 
the first Quaker women. Nothing has ever destroyed 
the hold of the felt hat upon the affections of the Eng- 
lish nation. 

" The Turk in linen wraps his head, 
The Persian his in lawn too; 
The Euss with sables furs his cap. 
And change will not be drawn to; 
The Spaniard's constant to his block. 

The French inconstant ever; 
But of all felts that can be felt. 
Give me your English beaver." * 

Old Philip Stubbes, in 1585, wrote of 

HATS OF SUNDEIE FATIONS.f 

Sometymes they vse them sharpe on the croune, pearking vp 
like the spere, or shaft of a steeple, standyng a quarter of a 
yarde aboue the crowne of their heades, some more, some lesse, 
as please the phantasies of their inconstant mindes. Other- 
some be flat and broad on the crowne, like the battlemetes of a 
house. An other sorte haue rounde crownes, sometymes with 
one kinde of band, sometymes with another, now blacke, now 
white, nowe russed, now redde, now grene, nowe yellowe, now 
this, now that, neuer content with one colour or fashion two 
dales to an ende. And thus in vanitie they spend the Lorde his 
treasure, consuming their golden yeres and siluer dales in wick- 
ednesse and sinne. And as the fashions bee rare and strange, 

* " English Mutability in Dress." 

t Philip Stubbes, ** Anatomie of Abuses," 1586. 



^ A STUDY IN COSTUME. 61 

so is the stuffe whereof their hattes be made diuers also; for 
some are of silke, some of ueluet, some of taffatie, some of sarce- 
net, some of wooll, and, whiche is more curious, some of a 
certaine kinde of fine haire; these they call beuer hattes, of xx. 
XXX. or xl. shillinges price, fetched from beyonde the seas, from 
whence a greate sorte of other vanities doe come besides. And 
so common a thing it is, that euery seruyng man, countrieman, 
and other, euen all indefferently, dooe weare of these hattes. 
For he is of no account or estimation amongst men if he haue 
not a ueluet or taffatie hatte, and that must be pincked, and 
cunnyngly earned of the beste fashion. And good profitable 
hattes be these, for the longer you weare them the fewer holes 
they haue. Besides this, of late there is a new fashion of 
wearyng their hattes sprong vp amongst them, which they father 
vpon a Frenchman, namely, to weare them with bandes, but how 
vnsemely (I will not sale how assie) a fashion that is let the 
wise judge; notwithstanding, howeuer it be, if it please them, 
it shall not displease me. 

And another sort (as phantasticall as the rest) are content 
with no kinde of hat without a greate bunche of feathers of 
diuers and sondrie colours, peakyng on top of their heades, not 
vnlike (I dare not sale) cockescombes, but as sternes of pride, 
and ensignes of vanity. And yet, notwithstanding these flut- 
terying sailes, and feathered flagges of defiaunce of vertue (for 
so they be) are so advanced in Ailgna [England], that euery 
child hath them in his hat or cap: many get good lining by. 
dying and selling of them, and not a few proue theselues more 
than fooles in wearyng of them. 

Briglit, in " Bartholomew Fair '' (Act I., Sc. 4), says: 

By this two-handed beaver, which is so thin 

And light, a butterfly's wings put to 't would make it 

A Mercury's flying hat, and soar aloft. 

And Edgeworth, in the same play: • 
See him steal pears in exchange for his beaver hat and his 
cloak, thus. 

Gay afterward wrote: 

The Broker here his spacious beaver wears; 

Upon his brow sit jealousies and cares,* 
______ 



62 THE QUAKER. 

A list of clothing for Prince Henry, eldest son of 
James I., in a bill rendered by Alexander Wilson, 
tailor, September 28, 1607, contains " a side hunting 
coat camblett wrought alle thicke with silke galowne 
in 2 together [double ?] with a whoode [hood] of 
same camblett,'' etc. Also, " Beavers of divers 
colours, lined with satin or taffeta,'' at sixty shillings 
each, and " new dying and lining three beavers with 
taffeta or sateen," five shillings.* Plumes on the broad 
hat came in at the end of the sixteenth century, and 
continued to the time of Queen Anne. The Spanish 
Dons on the streets of London were familiar figures in 
their flat-crowned hats and short cloaks, taking snuff 
prodigiously and smelling of garlic. Plain broad-brim 
hats of shovel shape were worn a good deal in the coun- 
try and by poorer Londoners for many years after this, 
when the cocked hat had begun its long and eventful 
reign. Samuel Pepys, to whose invaluable diary we 
must often turn, tells us, under date of November 30, 
1663: " Put on my new beaver "; and the next year he 
says: " Caught cold by flinging off my hat at dinner." 
In a note to this passage in Lord Clarendon's " Essay on 
Decay of Respect due to Old Age," the author says that 
in his younger days he never kept his hat on before his 
elders " except at dinner " ! This custom lasted into 
the next century. Pepys says again (February 22, 
1666-7): "All of us to Sir W. Pen's house, where 
some other company. It is instead of a wedding dinner 
for his daughter. . . . We had favors given us all, and 
we put them in our hats, I against my will, but that niy 
Lord [Brouncker] and the rest did." This was doubt- 

*Arch8eologia. Vol. XXIV. 1793. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 63 

less at table. Planche says that the absence of hats in 
the print of the banquet for Charles II. can only be ac- 
counted for by the presence of the sovereign. 

The gentleman of fashion in 1695 wore his hair long 
under a broad plumed hat. The jeweled sword at his 
side dangled from an embroidered scarf; enormous coat 
cuffs concealed his hands, when they were not thrust 
into a huge muff. The large bordered hat was turned 
up at three sides, and until 1710 kept the adornment of 
plumes. After that the cord and ribbon seem to have 
been adopted.* These flapping brims grew so broad as 
to necessitate looping up, and hence the origin of the 
cocked hat, which had a long and honored career. The 
absence of cocking denoted the sloven, f 

"Take out your snuflF-box, cock, and look smart, hah," 

says Carlos, in Cibber's " Love makes a Man.'' Their 
numerous shapes are alluded to by Budgell J : " I ob- 
served afterwards that the variety of Cock in which 
he moulded his Hat, had not a little contributed to his 
Impositions upon me.'' That man was to be guarded 
against ^^who had a sly look in his eye, and wore the but- 
ton of his hat in front." Both sexes wore small looking- 
glasses. Men even wore them in their hats. In 

* " Le bas de milan, le castor, 
Ome d'un riche cordon d'or." 
— Quicherat, " Histoire de Costume en France," p. 474. 



<] 

feutre. " ( " I have beautiful lace for beaver hats " ) . 

was introduced about 1599 ; and in the speech of Fastidio in " Every Man 

Out of His Humour," we find him saying : *' I had a gold cable hat-band, 

then new come up, of massie goldsmith's work." 

t" My mother . . . had rather follow me to the grave than see me 
tear my clothes, and hang down my head and sneak about with dirty shoes 
and blotted fingers, hair unpowdered and a hat uncocked." (Rambler, 
109.) See also, Ashton, " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," p. 107. 

J Spectator, 319. 



64 THE QUAKER. 

" Cynthia's Eevels " we read: " Where is your page ? 

Call for your casting bottle, and place your mirror in 

your hat, as I told you." This, however, was the height 

of affectation. Ladies wore mirrors in their girdles, 

and on their breasts; and Lovelace says: 

"My lively shade thou ever shalt retaine, 
In thy enclosed, feather-framed glasse." * 

The cocked hat was universal, and was worn by boys 
as well as men — the " tri-corne " of the French. The 
varying cocks f were well known ; there were, for in- 
stance, the " military cock," the " mercantile cock," 
the ^^ Denmark cock " ; they were ridiculed occasionally 
as the " Egham, Staines and Windsor," from the three- 
cornered sign post of that name. During this period 
all hats were black, with a gold or silver band. 

The London Chronicle (Vol. XL, p. 167, for the year 

1762) has the following: 

Hats are now worn upon an average, six inches and three- 
fifths broad in the brim, and cocked between Quaker and Keven- 
huller. Some have their hats open before, like a church-spout, 
or the tin scales they weigh flower in; some wear them rather 
sharper, like the nose of a greyhound; and we can distinguish 
by the taste of the hat, the mode of the wearer's mind. There 
is the military cock, and the mercantile cock; and while the 
beaux of St. James wear their hats under their arms, the beaux 
of Morefield 'Mall wear theirs diagonally over the left or right 
eye. Sailors wear the sides of their hats uniformly tucked down 
to the crown, and look as if they carried a triangular apple- 
pasty upon their heads. . . . With Quakers it is a point of their 
faith not to wear a button or a loop tight up; their hats spread 
over their heads like a pent-house, and darken the outward man, 
to signify that they have the inward light. 

*Thistleton-Dyer, " Domestic Folk Lore," p. 115. 

t In the two-cocked hat originated our naval and military cocked hats 
of modern uniform. 




A STUDY IN COSTUME. 65 

The " Kevenhuller " would seem to have been an ex- 
aggerated form of cock, for one writ- 
ing in The Connoisseur, in 1754 (Eo, 
36), had said of the women's hats in 
that year : " They are more bold and 
impudent than the broad-brimmed, /f' 

staring KevenJiullers worn a few years rpj^g « Kevenhuller." 

ago by the men." (After Hogarth.) 

The " Ladle's Advice to A Painter," in the London 
Magazine for August, 1Y55, ran thus: 

Painter, once more shew thy art; 
Draw the idol of my heart; 
Draw him as he sports away, 
Softly smiling, sweetly gay; 
Carefully each mode express. 
For man's judgment is his dress. 
Cock his beaver neat and well, 
(Beaver size of cockleshell) ; 
Cast around a silver cord^ 
Glittering like the polish'd sword. 
Let his wig be thin of hairs, 
(Wig that covers half his ears) . 

Toward the end of the century there were signs of a 
change. In 1770 hats became round; in 1772 they rose 
behind and fell before, as in the portraits of some of 
the old worthies well known. The round hat that again 
appeared after 1789, with highish crown and wide 
brim, was the ancestor of the top hat of the nineteenth 
century. In 1776, the period of the American Revolu- 
tion, the popular hat in Paris was that " a la Suisse," 
known later as the " Alpine " hat. Parisian anglo- 
maniacs preferred the ^^ jockey," small and round. 
Then there were hats " a la Hollandais,"and " a la 
Quaker," both the latter round in form, with large 



66 THE QUAKER. 

brim, usiiallj worn in preference by tbe more old- 
fashioned. The French Eevolution put a period to 
wigs, and hence also to the " chapeau bras "; for as a 
protection these enormous powdered periwigs rendered 
hats superfluous, beside the necessity for displaying 
what had been come at with such expenditure of time 
and money ! 

" His pretty black beaver tucked under his arm, 
If placed on his head, might keep it too warm ! " 

After the great periwig disappeared, the " tie " wig 
followed, and then the " queue " of natural hair, with its 
neat ribbon bow, so familiar to us in the portraits of 
Washington and the men of the succeeding generation. 
The hat again became a necessity rather than a luxury, 
and resumed its place on the head. The beaver hat had 
a long life of two hundred years. Its weight was doubt- 
less an element in its loss of popularity. For several 
years the " filled beaver " (a silk finish on a felt body, 
now obsolete), was worn; and by the early nineteenth 
century was leaving the cocked hat solely to conserva- 
tive men of the older generation for full dress. 

1810 saw the manufacture of the first all-silk hat. 
It did not become popular in Paris, and consequently 
anywhere else, until 1830. At that period the soft hat 
for purposes of dress was rejected, and the top hat 
came, and has never gone. At first it was the " Wel- 
lington," with '^ yeoman " crown; then the "Anglesea," 
with bell-shaped crown; then the D'Orsay, with ribbed 
silk binding and large bow on the band.* The Ameri- 
can, like the Frenchman, has been largely released from 

* Georgiana Hill, " History of English Dress. Vol. II. , p. 254. 



A STUDY IN C08TVME. 67 

the dominion of the stiff hat for ordinary occasions; 
and this freedom is traceable to the influence respec- 
tively of the first Mexican war, when we made the ac- 
quaintance of the soft and picturesque Spanish hat; the 
rush of the " '49ers," who were again introduced to it, 
in California three years later; and the wild enthusiasm 
that greeted Kossuth when he first came to our shores 
wearing the " Alpine " hat and feather.* We drew the 
line at the feather, but his hat is with us still. 

Such, briefly, is the history of the worldly hat, dur- 
ing two hundred years of Quakerism. Let us see what 
the Quaker did with his. The hat worn by Fox and 
ever since associated in our minds with the Quakers, 
was that of the cavalier, without the feather, worn less 
jauntily, but still the same. William Penn's more fa- 
miliar figure will occur to us. ^ow it is easy to per- 
ceive that in a community where the people had been 
accustomed to see their older members retaining the 
hat much of the time while indoors, and had regarded 
the rapidly prevailing custom, of removing it on enter- 
ing the house as an affectation of the " smart set,'' that 
the moment any notion was suggested of the conscience 
being involved in the retention of that article, there 
would be a prompt response. Not only did the Quakers 
decline to greet their neighbors by doffing the hat, but 
they were equally stiff in the presence of the sovereign. 
Swift writes to Stella : " My friend Penn came here — 

* This hat was much like the Welsh hat still worn, and the Tyrolese 
steeple hat. There was an old legend on the other side of the mountains, 
that the Tyrolese were men who wore such high-pointed hats that they 
could not walk about on the mountains without knocking down the stars. 
So the Lord God drew down the clouds every night to keep the stars in 
Heaven ! The Spanish hat was somewhat the same. " Upon his head 
was a hat with a high peak, somewhat of the kind which the Spaniards 
call calane, so much in favor with the braves of Seville and Madrid." 
George Borrow, *' Romany Rye," p. 34. 



68 TEE QUAKER. 

Will Penn, the Quaker — at the head of his brethren, 
to thank the Duke for his kindness to their people in 
Ireland. To see a dozen scoundrels with their hats on, 
and the Duke complimenting with his off, was a good 
sight enough.'' * Charles II. once granted an audience 
to the courtly Quaker, William Penn, who, as was his 
custom, entered the royal presence with his hat on. The 
humorous sovereign quietly laid aside his own, which 
occasioned Penn's inquiry, " Friend Charles, why dost 
thou remove thy hat ? " " It is the custom," he replied, 
" in this place, for one person only to remain covered." 
Apropos of Barclay's dictum in the Apology, " It is 
not lawful for Christians to kneel or prostrate them- 
selves to any man," an observer of the English who 
traveled among them from the Continent in 1698, thus 
wrote, noting a slight improvement in the manners of 
the stricter Quakers at that date: 

Plusieurs d'entre eux, depuis quelques annees, s'humanisent 
un peu, a regard de la salutation; ils n'Stent pas le cliapeau, 
Dieu les garde de commetre cet horrible peche: mais ils com- 
mencent a baiser un peu le menton, ^ fairs une esp^ce de petite 
inclination de t§te. 

Old Tom Brown wrote : 

These are more just than the other dissenters, because, as they 
pull not off their hats to God, so they pull them not off to men, 
whereas, the others shall cringe and bow to any man they may 
get sixpence by, but ne'er vail the bonnet to God, by whom they 
may get Heaven.f 

Fox says: 

Moreover, when the Lord sent me into the world, he forbade 
me to put off my hat to any, high or low, and I was required to 
thee and thou all men and women, without any respect to rich 
or poor, great or small. And as I travelled up and down, I was 

" * Journal to Stella. January 15, 1712. 

t Quoted " Archseologia." Vol. XXVII., p. 51. 



A 8TUDT IN COSTUME. 69 

not to bid people Good-morrow or Good-evening, neither might / 
I bow or scrape with my leg to any one; this made the sects 
and professions rage. 

At the Launceston assizes, in 1656, Fox was brought 
into court wearing his hat, with his companion, Edward 
Pyot. He says: 

We stood a pretty while with our hats on, and all was quiet. 
I was moved to say, " Peace be amongst you." Judge Glyn, a 
Welshman, then Chief Justice of England, said to the gaoler, 
*• What be these you have brought here into court ? " " Prison- 
ers, my Lord," says he. " Why do you not put off your hats ? " 
said the judge to us. We said nothing. "Put off your hats," 
said the Judge again. Still we said nothing. Then said the 
Judge, " The court commands you to put off your hats." Then 
I queried, " Where did ever any magistrate, king or judge, from 
Moses to Daniel, command any to put off their hats, when they 
came before them in their courts, either among the Jews, (the 
people of God), or the heathen? and if the law of England doth 
command any such thing, shew me that law, either written or 
printed." The Judge grew very angry, and said, "I do not 
carry my law-books on my back." ... So they took us away, 
and put us among the thieves. Presently after he said to the 
gaoler, " Bring them up again." " Come," said he, " where had 
they hats, from Moses to Daniel? Come, answer me, I have you 
now." I replied, " Thou mayest read in the third of Daniel, that 
the three children were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchad- 
nezzar's command, with their coats, their hose and their hats 
on." This plain instance stopped him; so that not having any 
thing else to the point, he cried again, "Take him away, 
gaoler." 

In October, 16 5 Y, at Edinburgh, Fox was obliged to 
appear before the Royal Council, and upon his entrance 
into the Council Chamber the doorkeeper removed his 
hat. " I asked him," says Fox, " why he did so, and 
who was there, that I might not go in with my hat on ? 
I told him I had been before the Protector with my hat 
on. But he hung up my hat and had me in before 
them." 



70 THE QUAKER. 

At Basingstoke, whicli Fox calls " a very rude town," 
he had a meeting, at the close of which he says; " I 
was moved to put off my hat and pray to the Lord to 
open their understandings; upon which they raised a 
report that I put off my hat to them, and bid them 
goodnight, which was never in my heart." At Read- 
ing, 1658, he adds: " We had much to do with them 
about our hats, and saying Thou and Thee to them. 
They turned their profession of patience and modera- 
tion into rage and madness; many of them were like 
distracted men for this hat-honour." At the Exon as- 
sizes Friends were fined for not putting off their hats. 
At Tenby, John-ap-John was imprisoned for wearing 
his hat in what Fox calls " the steeple-house," which he 
entered after leaving the meeting which Fox was at the 
time conducting. ISText day, in a conversation with the 
Governor, Fox says: 

I asked him, " Why he cast my friend into prison ? " He said, 
" For standing with his hat on in the church." I said, " Had not 
the priest two caps on his head, a black one and a white one? 
Cut off the brims of the hat, and then my friend would have but 
one; and the brims of the hat were but to defend him from the 
weather." " These are frivolous things," said the Governor. 
" Why, then," said I, " dost thou cast my friend into prison for 
such frivolous things ? " 

In London, before Sir Henry Vane, Friends were 
finally admitted to court with their hats on, chiefly 
through the mediation of others. 

That so serious results should have followed so ap- 
parently innocent a peculiarity as the refusal to remove 
the hat, or give what the Quakers termed " hat-honor," 
seems almost incredible to us now. And doubtless 
there were many in the position of Johnson's " pious 




«'^t 






it 



fei* 



jeorge Dillwy7t,.ifj8-i820. 

After an engraving on ston^ by J, Collins. 



A STUD7 IN COSTUME. 71 

gentleman/' who, though " he never entered a church, 
never passed one without taking off his hat." Robert 
Barclay sums up the whole matter when he says: 

Kneeling, bowing and uncovering of the head is the alone out- 
ward signification of our adoration towards God, and therefore 
it is not lawful to give it unto man. He that kneeleth or pros- 
trateth himself to man, what doeth he more to God? He that 
boweth and uncovereth his head to the Creature, w^hat hath he 
reserved to the Creator ? * 

It has been the mistake of writers upon costume not 
only to assert that the shape of the hat has never ma- 
terially altered among the Quakers, but that they never 
wore cocked hats at all. That cocked hats accom- 
panied the wigs, and were the usual form of head-dress 
at one time, even in the minister's gallery, is a per- 
fectly established fact. George Dillwyn, who died in 
1820, wears the transition hat, from the cock, to the 
broad-brim revived and modified. The broad-brim and 
the cock are the two forms of the Quaker hat. The 
common sense of the cock early appealed to the prac- 
tical Quaker mind, and we have many portraits of 
prominent Quakers in hats of varying cock — Dr. Foth- 
ergill. Dr. Lettsom, William Cookworthy in England; 
and in America, Robert Proud, the Pembertons, Owen 
Jones, and many others. The Americans were always 
more strict in dress than the English, largely because 
his proximity to the continent familiarized the English- 
man with more cosmopolitan ideas. However, the kind 
of cock was vastly important. Hannah Callowhill 
Penn, William Penn's second wife, in writing to her 
son Thomas Penn, in London, December, 1717, ssijsi 

* " Apology." Proposition XV. 



72 THE QUAKER, 

I wish thou could have shifted till nearer Spring for a hatt, 
for I doubt to buy a good one now 'twill be near spoyled before 
the Hight of summer. . . . However, consider and act for the 
best Husbandry, and then please thyself e; but be sure wch. ever 
'tis, that 'tis packed up in a very Frd. like way, for the fantas- 
tical cocks in thine and thy brother Johne's hats has burthened 
my Spiritt much, and Indeed more than most of your Dress be- 
sides; therefore, as thou Valines my Comfort, Regulate it more 
for the future. I have a Multitude of Toyls and Cares, but they 
would be greatly Mitigated, if I may but behold thee and thy 
Brother, persuing hard after Vertue and leaving as behind your 
backs the Toyish allurements and snares of tliis uncertam 
world.* 

In spite of himself, the Quaker was carried along on 
the tide of fashion; indeed, he might to this day be 
wearing his heavy beaver hat, had 
it not, like the mammoth, become 
extinct ! Certain of the '' plainer 
sort '' (not in the sense in which 
George Fox used the term, but 
meaning the more strict in guise) 
for many years refused to dye the 
beaver of their hats. The last 
white beaver hat did not disappear 

Colonial Treasurer of Penna. frOm Philadelphia UUtil 1876, 
Nat. 1711. Obiitl793. _^ ' 

^e-82. when what we know as the modern 

silk hat appeared, f A modification of it was adopted 
by the cosmopolitan Quaker, and has ever since 
been retained. To the initiated, however, the silk 
hat goes a long way to mark the man; and 
the decree of King Edward VII. in favor of 
that adornment, keeps it de rigueur in England 

♦Howard M. Jenkins, " The Family of WiUiam Penn," p. 99. 

t John Hetherington wore the first silk top hat on the Strand, in 
London, in 1797. The style was his own invention, and he was mobbed in 
consequence. 




Four Old- Time Pennsylvania Worthies. 



John Pembej'toJi, I'/sy-iygj. 
Henry Drinker, ly^/j.-rSog. 
James^ Femberlon, j'j24-i8og. 
John Parrish, iy;^o-i8oy. 



;aa 




JOHN PEMEEKTON, 




HENRY DEINKER. 




•TAMES PEMEEKTON. 




.TOHN PARRISll. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



73 



and America. As the silk hat of the cabinet minis- 
ter is not the mercantile silk hat, nor yet that of 
the cleric, so the Quaker hat also retains its indi- 
viduality; and in its shiny perfection and its amplitude 
of dimensions, when mounted above the occasional 
straight coat collar, more nearly resembles the dress 
of the American Roman Catholic priest than any other. 
The modern young Quaker has now freed himself 
from the conventions of the early nineteenth cen- 
tury, and is often ignorant of the true reasons for the 
peculiarities of his forefathers. When the court gal- 
lants of James II. lowered their crowns and widened 





Puritan. 1653. 

their brims, the Puritans kept their crowns high. 
Charles II. escaped in a " very greasy old grey steeple- 
crowned hat, with the brim turned up, without lining 
or hat-band.'' The high-crowned hat was beginning to 
be old-fashioned before his time; hence its choice as a 
means of disguise. So tall a hat had had its inconveni- 
ences, as we read: " I pray, what were our sugar-loofe 
hats, so mightily affected of late, both by men and 
women, so incommodious for us, that every puffe of 
winde deprived us of them, requiring the employment 



74 THE QUAKER. 

of one liand to keep them on.'' * The tall hat came to 
America on our Pilgrim Fathers, where its shape un- 
derwent a slight alteration. The brim became more 
narrow, and the top rather less pointed. Difficulty in 
finishing the beaver quite so finely also left the fur 
more fluffy. We are told that this hat lasted in ISTew 
England until the time came for Benjamin Franklin 
to go to France, when, as we know, he went to Paris 
in a ISTew England chimney-pot hat. This was at once 
adopted by the ardent Parisians, who almost worshiped 
the American envoy, as ^^ anti-English," the symbol of 
Liberty, etc. For some years the French had a monop- 
oly of it; then it came to England, and eventually to 
America again, transformed and modified into the 
modern top hat. It may be noted that the Quakers 
adopted the court style of James II., and not the Puri- 
tan hat, when they first wore the beaver, illustrating 
in the hat, as has elsewhere been shown in their long 
hair, the loyalty to the crown that was a part of their 
conservatism. One of these early Quaker hats, once 
the property of Reuben Macy, may now be seen in the 
museum at Nantucket, Massachusetts, f 

The attitude of the Quakers at once led to endless 
controversies, whose repetition here is unnecessary. 

*Bulwer, "Artificial Changeling." Quoted by Repton, in Arch- 
seologia. Vol. XXIV., p. 181. 

tA French Canadian Journal of recent date (Montreal " Presse,'* 
ed. hebdomadaire, May 18th, 1899), thus describes with mild surprise 
and courteously expressed admiration, a nineteenth century Friend who 
has retained the plain garb of the latest form evolved. He is called 
" un ministre Quaker," " d'une taille gigantesque." "Pour ne parler 
que de sa coiflfure, disons de suite qu'il portait uu chapeau de castor de 
dix-huit pouces de hauteur avec des bords droits d'6gales dimensions. 
. . . II ne parle qu'^ la seconde personne, et n'ote son fameux couvre- 
chef que pour dormir ! En dehors de sa toquade r^ligieuse, dont il vous 
entretient a Pexclusion de tout autre sujet, c'est un gentilhomme d'une in- 
telligence remarkable." 



Septhnus Roberts, i8oy. 

Aged.18. 

After the etching by Rosenthal, 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



75 



Much literature appeared on the subject, which fur- 
nished a fruitful source to the writer of satirical tracts. 
Such things were published as " Wickham Wakened: 
or The Quakers Madrigal, in Kime Dogrell," begin- 
ning: 

The Quaker and his brats 
Are born with their hats^ 
Which a point with two Taggs 
Ties fast to their Craggs.* 

Certain Friends warned their members that the re- 
moval of the hat was a dangerous formality. During 
worship, however. Fox had given instructions that the 













-J-^^^^ 




•■*, 


I^^^P'. • ,, -*-?^^E^^^^ 




^i 


^^■^^ '- ' ''"■ -' "^ ^^^^i 




li 


UDE' ' " '''£^^^&±. 




1 






i 


^^^BH 




■ 


^B^ ' ' 




^ 


gl^ignng^ 




Nantucket Beaver Hat. 



head should be uncovered at time of prayer, and 
Friends should either reverently kneel, as among the 
Episcopalians, or stand, as did the Presbyterians. The 
latter custom eventually became adopted. 

The " Canons and Institutions ^' of Fox, in Article 
Seventh, condemn " those who wear their Hattes when 



By Martin Llewellyn, of Christ Church, Oxford. 



76 TEE QUAKER. 

Friends pray." Fox was originally in the habit of at- 
tending the Church of England. When welcome doc- 
trine was expounded, he removed his hat; if, however, 
the preacher uttered unwelcome sentiments, he sol- 
emnly put it on as a protest; and if the matter continued 
to offend him, he rose and silently left. It was for 
purposes of habitual protest that Quakers first learned 
to sit in places of worship with their hats on. The pro- 
test was a decorous and inoffensive one, compared with 
much of the rough dealing then prevalent. There was 
no proper attitude of reverence in the London churches 
up to, and during the time of Queen Anne; lolling, ris- 
ing, or sitting at will being the rule, even among the 
Episcopalians,* The Presbyterian minister's example 
in the pulpit was so far followed, that often in country 
neighborhoods, one might see the louts of the congre- 
gation fling on their hats in sermon time. In Scotland, 
in 1740, a traveler condemns " a custom which I see 
is getting pretty general among the lower sort, of cock- 
ing on the hat when the sermon began." William 
Mucklow, who, in his " Spirit of the Hat," had said that 
" the removal of the hat in worship and during prayer 
is the beginning of a formal worship," was eventually 
" recovered to a better mind," and brought to agree 
with Fox and to be more in charity with Friends. 
George Whitehead says,f "All preaching cannot be that 
entire and peculiar prophesying, which, when one is im- 
mediately called to, I grant it is most seemly to stand 
up with the hat off." Some others beside the Inde- 
pendents preached with the hat on. Lady Montague 

*See Spectator, No. 455, and Tatler, No. 241. 
t" The Apostate Incendiary Rebuked," p. 30. 



A 8TVDT IN COSTUME. 77 

wrote from Mmeguen, in the ISTetherlaiids, in 1716 
[Letters] : " I was yesterday at the French church, and 
stared very much at the manner of the service. The 
parson clapped on a broad brimmed hat in the first 
place, which gave him the air of What d'ye call him, in 
Bartholomew Fair.'' Up to the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century, the hat was a prominent object in their 
pulpits. At a parish in Clydesdale (Scotland), the 
patron said to a new candidate for the incumbency, 
" Sir, there are two nails in the pulpit, on one of which 
the late worthy minister used to hang his hat. If you 
put your hat on the right one, it will please; none of 
the others have hit upon it." He did so, and got the 
place !* The clergy in the earliest days in England had 
worn woollen caps, which in some form long prevailed. 
The Scotch minister of 1700 was not so different from 
his congregation in dress as one hundred years later, 
when an official clerical uniform had been evolved and 
received general recognition. The cleric of the earlier 
date wore gray homespun, like his next neighbor, with 
a colored cravat; while in 1800, he appeared on Edin- 
burgh streets, wearing a brown wig, or possibly pow- 
dered hair in a pigtail, a cocked hat, black single- 
breasted coat, frills and ruffles, knee-breeches and sil- 
ver-buckled shoes, and bore himself with a general air 
of dignity that his predecessor would have regarded as 
savoring of worldliness to the last degree. Culture and 
religion, in those early days in Scotland, could never go 
hand in hand. 

Martin Mason, of Lincoln, who was one of John 
Perot's schism in regard to taking off the hat in time 

*H. G. Graham, " Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury." Vol. II., p. 104. 



78 THE QUAKER. 

of prayer,* and wlio wrote verses to the memory of 
Perot, says, in a letter to a friend, " What matter 
whether Hat on or Hat off, so long as the Heart is 
right ? '' t 

The majesty of the law demanded recognition in the 
removal of the hat ; and it was in the courts that Eriends 
suffered most severely because they could not conscien- 
tiously observe the conventionalities. The famous case 
of William Penn and William Meade, the son-in-law of 
Margaret Pox, may be cited as an early instance. After 
their discharge by the jury at the trial, September 1-5, 
1670, they were re-committed to [N'ewgate in default 
of payment of fines for " contempt of court '^ in declin- 
ing to remove their hats during the trial. Admiral 
Penn paid their fines two days later, vdthout their 
knowledge, and they were released. Thousands of 
similar cases are to be found in England. The feeling 
was the same in 'New England. But the presence of 
Penn at the head of the administration of affairs in 
Pennsylvania gave the Quakers in that colony a distinct 
advantage in regard to some of their scruples. After 
liis death, the traditions of his proprietaryship are well 
exemplified in the following petition and the resulting 
order of the Chancellor. Sir William Keith, who filled 
that office, instituted in 1720 a Court of Chancery, 
and it was before that court that the eminent Chief Jus- 
tice Kinsey appeared with his hat on. John Kinsey 
was prominent both as lawyer and Quaker, and when he 

*Ellwood refers to Perot's " peculiar error of keeping on the Hatte 
in Time of Prayer, as well publick as private, unless they had an imme- 
diate motion at that time to put it oiF." 

t Joseph Smith, Catalogue of Friends' Books. "Vol. II., p. 153. See 
also, by Richard Richardson, of London, " Of adoration in general, & in 
particular, of Hat-Honour — their rise, etc." 8vo, 1680. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 79 

followed the usual custom of his sect in retaining his 
hat, the President promptly ordered it taken off, which 
was accordingly done.* This arbitrary proceeding 
called forth 

The humble address of the people called Quakers, by appoint- 
ment of their Quarterly Meeting, held in Philadelphia, for the 
city and county, 2nd. of second month, 1725, — 

May it please the Governor: Having maturely considered the 
inconveniences and hardships which, we are apprehensive, all 
those of our community may be laid under who shall be obliged 
or required to attend the respective courts of judicature in this 
province, if they may not be admitted without first having their 
hats taken off from their heads by an officer, as we understand 
was the case of our friend John Kinsey, when the Governor was 
pleased to command his to be taken off, before he could be ad- 
mitted to speak in^ a case depending in a Court of Chancery, 
after that he h^ declared that he could not, for conscience, 
comply with the Governor's order to himself to the same pur- 
pose; which, being altogether new and unprecedented in this 
province, was the more surprising to the spectators, and as we 
conceive (however slight some may account it) has a tendency 
to the subversion of our religious liberties. 

This province, with the powers of government, was granted 
by King Charles the Second to our proprietor, who, at the time 
of the said grant, was known to dissent from the national way 
of worship in divers points, and particularly in that of outward 
behavior, of refusing to pay unto man the honors that he, with 
all others of the same profession, believe only to be due to the 
Supreme Being; and they have, on occasions, supported their tes- 
timony, so far as to be frequently subjected to the insults of 
such as require that homage. 

That the principal part of those who accompanied our said 
proprietor in his first settlement of this colony with others of 
the same profession, who have since retired into it, justly con- 
ceived that by virtue of said powers granted to our proprietor, 
they should have a free and unquestioned right to the exercise 
of their religious principles, and their persuasion in the afore- 
mentioned points and all others, by which they were dis- 
tinguished from those of all other professions. And it seems 



* Proud. Vol. II., p. 197 



80 THE QUAKER, 

not unreasonable to conceive an indulgence intended by the 
crown, in graciously leaving the government to him and them 
in such manner as may best suit their circumstances which 
appears to have been an early care in the first legislators, by 
several acts, as that of Liberty of Conscience, and more particu- 
larly by a law of the province, passed in the thirteenth year of 
King William, Chapter xcii, now in force. It is provided, '' That 
in all courts, all persons, of all persuasions, may freely appear in 
their own way, and according to their own manner, and there 
personally plead their own cause, or, if unable, by their friends," 
which provision appears to be directly intended to guard against 
all exceptions to any person appearing in their own way, as our 
friend at the aforesaid court. 

Now, though no people can be more ready and willing, in all 
things essential, to pay due regard to superiors, and honor the 
courts of justice, and those who administer them, yet, in such 
points as interfere with our conscientious persuasion, we have 
openly and firmly borne our testimony in all countries and 
places where our lot has fallen. 

We must therefore, crave leave to hope, from the reasons hero 
humbly offered, that the Governor, when he fully considers them, 
will be of opinion with us, that we may justly and modestly 
claim it as a right, that we and our friends should, at all times, 
be excused in the government from any compliances against our 
conscientious persuasions; and humbly request that he would, in 
future, account it so to us, thy assured, well-wishing friends. 

Signed by appointment of the said meeting, 

John GoodsoUj Samuel Preston, Morris Morris, 

Rowland Ellis^ William Hudson, Anthony Morris^ 

Reece Thomas, Richard Hill, Evan Evans. 
Richard Hayes, 

On consideration had of the humble address presented, this 
day read in open court, from the Quarterly Meeting of the peo- 
ple called Quakers for the city and county of Philadelphia; it is 
ordered, that the address be filed with the Register, and that it 
be made a standing rule of the Court of Chancery for the Prov- 
ince of Pennsylvania for all time to come, that any practitioner 
of the law, or other officer or person, whatsoever, professing him- 
self to be one of the people called Quakers, may, and shall be 
admitted, if they so think fit, to speak or otherwise officiate or 
apply themselves decently unto the said court without being 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 81 

obliged to observe the usual ceremony of uncovering their heads, 
by having their hats taken off. And such privilege, hereby or- 
dered and granted to the people called Quakers, shall at no time 
hereafter be understood or interpreted as any contempt or 
neglect of said Court; and shall be taken only as an act of con- 
scientious liberty, of right appertaining to the religious persua- 
sion of the said people, and agreeable to their practice in all civil 
affairs of life. ^^ g^^^ William Keith, Chancellor.* 

The refusal of Fox and his contemporaries to remove 
their hats before Justices, etc., had not been a new 
thing in England. In Bishop Aylmer's time " there 
were a sort of people who counted it idolatry to pull off 
their hat or give reverence, even to princes." f These 
were probably a sect of the Anabaptists. Aylmer was 
Bishop of London between 1578 and 1594. The Ger- 
man Baptists refused the customary greetings. 

This method of protest had been in use among other 
dissenters also, as the following instance from New 
England will serve to illustrate : 

William Witter, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was an aged Baptist, 
who had already been prosecuted by the Puritans; but in 1651, 
being blind and infirm, he asked the Newport church to send 
some of the brethren to him, to administer the communion, for 
he found himself alone in Massachusetts. Accordingly, John 
Clark (the pastor) undertook the mission, accompanied by 
Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall. 

They reached Lynn on Saturday, July 19, 1651, and on Sunday 
staid within doors, in order not to disturb the congregation. A 
few friends were present, and Clark was in the midst of a ser- 
mon, when the house was entered by two constables with a war- 
rant signed by Robert Bridges, commanding them to arrest cer- 
tain " erroneous persons being strangers." The travellers were 
at once seized and carried to the tavern, and after dinner they 
were told that they must go to church. . . . The unfortunate 

* Michener, "Retrospect of Early Quakerism," p. 368. 
t Robert Barclay, "Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the 
Commonwealth," p. 501. 



82 THE QUAKER. 

Baptists remonstrated, saying that were they forced into the 
meeting house, they should be obliged to dissent from the ser- 
vice, but this the constable said, was nothing to him, and so 
he carried them away. On entering, during the prayer, the 
prisoners took off their hats, but presently put them on again 
and began reading in their seats. Whereupon Bridges ordered 
the officers to uncover their heads, which was done, and the ser- 
vice was then quietly finished. When all was over, Clark asked 
leave to speak, which, after some hesitation, was granted, on 
condition he would not discuss what he had heard. He began 
to explain how he had put on his hat because he could not 
judge that they were gathered according to the visible order of 
the Lord; but here he was silenced, and the three committed to 
custody for the night.* 

After a violent struggle, the ministers imder John Norton's 
lead succeeded, on the 19th of October, 1658, in forcing the 
capital act through the Legislature, which contained a clause 
making the denial of reverence to Superiors, or in other words, 
wearing the hat, evidence of Quakerism.f 

This was at the time of the famous trial of the South- 
wicks. 

We are told of four Quakers, who, on the 27th of 
Eighth month, 1658, at Boston, were brought before 
the General Court. They were Samuel Shattuck, 
]^. Phelps, Joshua Buffum, and Ann E'eedham. George 
Bishop's account of their case as he addressed that 
Court is as follows: 

They answered that they intended no Offense to you in com- 
ing thither (for they must come to you in their clothes, if they 
come decently, of which the hat is part) for it was not theii- 
Manner to have to do with Courts. And as for withdrawing 
from the Meetings, or keeping on their Hats, or doing anything 
in Contempt of them or their Laws, they said, the Lord was 
their Witness (as he is) that they did it not. So ye rose up 
and bid the Jaylor take them away4 

The Puritan minister, John Wilson, at the hanging of the 

* Brooks Adams, " The Emancipation of Massachusetts," p. 111. 

t Ibid., p. 170. 

t George Bishop, " New England Judged," p. 85. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 83 

Quaker, William Eobinson, on Boston Common, in 1659, said to 
the Quakers present, " Shall such Jacks as you come in before 
Authority with your Hats on ? " To which Eobinson repfied, 
" Mind you, mind you, it is for not putting off the Hat we are 
put to Death.* 

Later on, the usual fine for keeping on the hat seems 
to have been twenty shillings. 

The long hair of the Quakers was an offence to the 
Puritans of Massachusetts, as well as to those on the 
other side of the Atlantic. Edward Wharton was a 
" turbulent Quaker,'' whose persecutions were related 
by George Bishop, f in reply to his inquiry of the Bos- 
ton judges : 

"Wherefore have I been fetch'd from my Habitation, where 
I was following my honest Calling, and here laid up as an Evil- 
Doer ?" "Your Hair is too long (reply'd you), and you are 
disobedient to that Commandment which saith, 'Honour thy 
Father and Mother/ " To which said Edward, " Wherein ? " 
"In that you will not put off your Hat, (said you) before the 
Magistrates." 

The same Wharton, with four other Quakers, was 
brought before the General Court, Boston, 3 mo., 1665. 

Their hats, (the great offence), were commanded to be taken 
off, and thrown on the Ground ; which, being done, Mary Tomkina 
set her foot upon one of the Hats, and calling to you said, " See, 
I have your Honour under my Feet." Whereupon you demanded 
of her where her habitation was ? She answered, " My Habitation 
is in the Lord." $ 

A feeling of irritation is hardly to be wondered at 
on the part of any judge who got no more direct reply 
from a prisoner than that of Mary Tomkins. But this 
was a trifling matter ; for to bluff and confound the Jus- 

* George Bishop, " New England Judged," p. 124. 
tibid., p. 304. See also Brooks Adams, " The Emancipation of 
Massachusetts," p. 151. 
tlbid.,p. 460. 



84 THE QUAKER, 

tice was the proper method employed by all men in the 
English Courts of Law in that day, when literature 
shared in the involved style of intercourse and address, 
then universal. " Turbulent '' was a term applied to 
these early Quakers by their contemporaries, and, in- 
deed, by some of those contemporaries' descendants, 
who inherit still the old persecuting spirit. 

Thomas Ell wood in 1660, when, as a youth, he was 
undergoing much for the sake of his hat, gives us a 
description of his costume that is most interesting to us 
now. He says: 

While I was in London, I went to a little meeting of Friends, 
which was then held in the House of one Humphrey Baehe, a. 
Goldsmith, at the Sign of the Snail, in Tower Street. It was 
tlien a very troublesome time, not from the Government, but 
from the Rabble of Boys and Rude People, who, upon the turn 
of the Times, (upon the return of the King) took Liberty to be 
very abusive. 

When the Meeting ended, a pretty Number of these unruly 
Folk were got together at the Door, ready to receive the Friends 
as they came forth not only with evil Words, but with Blows. 
. . . But quite contrary to my Expectation, when I came out, 
they said one to another^ "Let him alone; don't meddle with 
him; he is no Quaker, I'll warrant you." 

I was troubled to think what the Matter was, or what these 
rude People saw in me, that made them not take me for a 
Quaker. And upon a close examination of myself, with respect 
to my Habit and Deportment, I could not find anything to place 
it on, but that I had then on my Head a large Mountier Cap of 
black Velvet, the Skirt of which being turned up in Folds, looked 
(it seems), somewhat above the common Garb of a Quaker; and 
this put me out of Conceit of my Cap. 

'Not long after this he writes : 

When a young Priest, who, as I understood, was Chap- 
lain in (a certain) family, took upon him pragmatically to re- 
prove me for standing with my Hat on before the Magistrates, 
and snatch'd my Cap from off my Head, Knowles (the Deputy- 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 85 

Lieutenant) in a pleasant manner corrected him, telling him he 
mistook himself in taking a Cap for a Hat (for mine was a 
Mountier-Cap) and bid him give it me again; which he (though 
unwillingly) doing, I forthwith put it on my Head again, and 
thenceforward none meddled with me about it. 

Again, he adds: 

I had in my hand a little Walking-Stick with a Head on it, 
which he took out of my Hand to look on it; but I saw his In- 
tention was to search it, whether it had a Tuck in it [sword] 
for he tried to have drawn the Head; but when he found it was 
Fast, he returned it to me. 

The violent antipathy of Thomas EUwood's father to 
any Quaker who refused to remove his hat in his pres- 
ence, caused his son many painful scenes with the 
worthy squire, and an alienation that was a grief to 
both. One of these occasions is thus described by Ell- 
wood: 

The sight of my hat upon my head . . . (made) . . . his pas- 
sion of grief turn to anger; he could not contain himself; but 
running upon me with both hands, first violently snatcht off my 
Hat and threw it away; and then giving me some buffets on the 
head he said, " Sirrah, get you up to your chamber." ... I had 
now lost one of my hats, and I had but one more. That there- 
fore, I put on, but did not keep it long; for the next Time my 
Father saw it on my Head, he tore it violently from me, and laid 
it up with the other, I knew not where. Wherefore I put on my 
Mountier-Cap, which was all I had left to wear on my head, and 
it was but a very little while that I had that to wear, for as 
soon as my Father came where I was, I lost that also. And now 
I was forced to go bareheaded wherever I had Occasion to go, 
within Doors and without.* . . . 

The day that I came home I did not see my Father, nor until 
noon the next Day, when I went into the Parlour where he was, 
to take my usual Place at Dinner. As soon as I came in, I ob- 
served by my Father's Countenance, that my Hat was still an 
Offence to him; but when I was sitten down, and before I had 

* " The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood," by Himself; pp. 50- 
2, 3d ed. 1765. 



86 TEE QUAKER. 

eaten anything, he made me understand it more fully, by say- 
ing to me, but in a milder Tone than he had formerly used to 
speak to me in, " If you cannot content yourself to come to Din- 
ner without your Hive upon your Head [so he called my Hat], 
pray rise and go take your Dinner some where else." Upon 
those words, I arose from the Table, and leaving the Room, went 
into the Kitchen, where I staid till the Servants went to Din- 
ner, and then sate down very contentedly with them. . . . And 
from this time he rather chose, as I thought, to avoid seeing me, 
than to renew the Quarrel about the Hat.* 

It appears that many wore caps and other varieties 
of head dress at first among the Friends, for the broad- 
brim was only just becoming sufficiently popular to be 
safely adopted by them without any risk of seeming 
too much in the mode. Moreover, they were all too 
much engaged in preaching and in ministering to their 
brethren who were in suffering from present or past 
imprisonments, to devote much time to dress, and each 
wore what best suited his purse and convenience. This 
is fully demonstrated in a charming little incident re- 
lated by Ellwood, who met the great young missionary, 
Edward Burrough, on his way to Oxford. Burrough 
was one of the early Quaker martyrs, dying in a foul 
prison at the age of twenty-eight. 

When I was come within a mile or so of the city (Oxford), 
whom should I meet upon the way, coming from thence, but Ed- 
ward Burrough! I rode in a Mountier (montero) cap (a dress 
more used then than now), and so did he; and because the 
weather was exceeding sharp, we both had dra\vn our caps down, 
to shelter our Faces from the Cold, and by that means neither 
of us knew the other, but passed by without taking notice one 
of the other till a few Days after, meeting again, and observ- 
ing each other's dress, we recollected where we had so lately 
met.f 

*'• The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood," by Himself; p. 68. 
tibid., p.31. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 87 

This was in the year 1659. The Century Dictionarjr 
defines a montero cap as derived from the Spanish 
*' Montero, a hunter/' and describes it as " a horse- 
man's or huntsman's cap, having a round crown with 
flaps which could be drawn down over the sides of the 
face." * 

But the cap, as time went on, had to be given up, for 
it was not very long before the broad-brim became 
unfashionable, and then it grew to be the distinctive 
mark of the Quaker. His following was so large that 
the hat became the badge of Quakerism wherever he 
went. 

Thomas Story, the famous Quaker traveler and 
preacher, who became a member of Penn's Council of 
State, Master of the Eolls, and Commissioner of Claims 
in Pennsylvania, describes graphically in his Journal 
the sufferings he endured as a young man on the subject 
of the hat ; his treatment by his father was quite similar 
to that of Penn and EUwood. All three were brought 
up as refined young men, carefully instructed by 
solicitous parents in all the airs and graces of polite so- 
ciety when it demanded far more formality and elabora- 
tion of manner than these busy, telephonic times will 
now permit their descendants. He tells us that in 
1691 he was invited to meet some gentlemen at a tav- 
ern, and says: 

I was not hasty to go, looking for the Countenance of the 
Lord therein, neither did I refuse; but my Father & some others, 
being impatient to have me among them, came likewise to me. 
I arose from my seat when they came in, but did not move my 

*"His hat was like a Helmet, or Spanish Montero," (Bacon). 
Evelyn's " Tyrannas " calls the Montero " light and serviceable when the 
sun is hot, and at other times ornamental." 



38 THE QUAKER. 

Hat to them as they to me. Upon which my Father fell a weep- 
ing and said, I did not use to behave so to him. I intreated 
him not to resent it as a Fault, for Tho* I now thought fit to 
decline that Ceremony, it was not in Disobedience, or Disrespect 
to him or them; for I honoured him as much as ever, and de- 
sired he would please to think so, notwithstanding exterior 
Alteration.* 

Of course it is possible to multiply indefinitely inci- 
dents that show the struggles of the spirit in terms of 
the hat. This affected even political questions, as well 
as those social and religious ; yet no more innocent body 
of people ever walked the earth than they under the 
broad-brims. In 1801 Kichard Jordan, a well-known 
American minister of the Society, was traveling on the 
Continent with Abraham Barker, a Friend from "New 
Bedford, Massachusetts, and the party arrived in Paris. 
Bichard Jordan mentions the following incident in his 
Journal: 

It may not perhaps be amiss to mention how we were treated 
at the municipality, where we attended to present our passports. 
We were stopped by the guards, who had strict orders, it seems, 
not to suffer any man to pass unless he had what is called a 
cockade in his hat, but on our desiring our guide to step for- 
ward and inform the Officers that we were of the people called 
Quakers, and that our not observing those signs of the times 
was not in contempt of authority, or disrespect to any office, 
but from a religious scruple in our minds, — it being the same 
with us in our own country — they readily accepted our reasons; 
and one of the officers came and took us by the guards, and so 
up into the chamber, where we were suffered to remain quietly 
with our hats on, until our passports were examined by two 
officers, and again endorsed under the seal of the republic, per- 
mitting us to go to Calvisson, in Languedoc, Thus it often ap- 
pears to me that we make our way better in the minds of the 

* Thomas Story, Journal, p. 40. (Folio ed.) 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 89 

people when we keep strictly to our religious profession, in all 
countries and among all sorts of persons.* 

Joseph John Gumey relates his own experience upon 
the first occasion that his Quakerism affected his hat. 
The step was very marked for one who had not pre- 
viously been a pronounced Friend, and who was so 
much in the midst of worldly interests as were all the 
Gurneys. He 



I was engaged long beforehand to a dinner party. For three 
weeks before I was in agitation from the knowledge that I must 
enter the drawing-room with my hat on. From this sacrifice, 
strange and unaccountable as it may seem, I could not escape. 
In a Friend's attire and with my hat on, I entered the drawing- 
room at the dreaded moment, shook hands with the mistress of 
the house, went back into the hall, deposited my hat, and re- 
turned home in some degree of peace. I had afterward the 
same thing to do at the Bishop's. The result was that I found 
myself a decided Quaker, was perfectly understood to have as- 
sumed that character, and to dinner parties, except in the family 
circle, I was asked no more. 

This was in 1810, when the Quaker " testimony " 
had become biit an eccentricity to the world, which 
chose to laugh rather than make it a cause for persecu- 
tion. Samuel Gurney and his brother Joseph John 
possessed in a remarkable degree the physical beauty 
that so distinguished the family, and the black velvet 
cap worn in later life by the latter over his beautiful 
hair, then growing gray, gave him the air of a fine old 
Boman Catholic Archbishop. 

It was no easy matter for the Quakers at any period 
thus to mortify the flesh, and Barclay says for himself 
and all his brethren : 

♦Richard Jordan, Journal, p. 106. 



90 



TEE QUAKER. 



This I can say boldly in the sight of God, from my own ex- 
perience & that of many thousands more, that however small or 
foolish this may seem, yet we behooved to suffer death rather 
than do it, [i.e., remove the hat] and that for conscience' sake; 
and that, in its being so contrary to our natural spirits, there 
are many of us to whom the forsaking of these bowings and cere- 
monies was as death itself; which we could never have left if 
we could have enjoyed our peace with God in the use of them. 




Royalist Hat, time of Commonwealth. 

(After Martin.) 



CHAPTER III. 

BEAEDS, WIGS AND BANDS 



Now a beard is a thing that commands in a King 

Be his sceptres never so fair ; 
Where the beard bears the sway, the people obey, 

And are subject to a hair. 

Now of the beards there be such a company, 

And fashions such a throng, 
That it is very hard to handle a beard, 

Tho' it be never so long. 

Ballad of the Beard^ Temp. Ch. I, 



CHAPTEK ni. 



BEARDS, WIGS AND BAOT)S. 




T happened that Quaker customs be- 
gan to crystallize at a time when 
smooth faces were universal; and 
to this accident is due their later 
" testimony " against beards, which 
would have been quite as strong 
against the practice of shaving off 
a natural adornment had the sect 
arisen a century earlier. It was noted by the early 
historian Sewel, as one of John Perot's " extravagant 
steps/' that he had allowed his beard to grow! Por- 
traits of James l^ayler, the " Apostate," show him in a 
full pointed beard; and there are also prints of the 
early Quaker preachers with flowing beards, but they 
are conspicuous exceptions. The full beard of Henry 
IV. had by 1628 become the pointed beard. Quicherat 
states as the origin of the smooth face the sportive 
order of Louis XIII. to his courtiers to cut off all the 
beard, leaving only a small tuft on the chin.* The Eus- 
sians were conspicuous exceptions to this fashion; and 
Evelyn, under date 24 October, 1681, writes of the 
Russian Ambassador at the court of St. James : " 'Twas 
reported of him he condemned his sonn to lose his head 



* The following verse celebrates tliis : 
" Helas ! Ma pauvre barbe, 
Qu'est-ce qui t'a faite ainsi? 
C'est le grand roy Louis, 
Treizifeme de se nom, 
Qui toute a esbarbe sa maison." 



94 TEE QUAKER. 

for shaving off his beard and putting himselfe in ye 
French fashion at Paris, and that he would have exe- 
cuted it had not the French Eang interceded." 

The beard disappeared when the ruff went out, and 
smooth faces are associated with the time of the early 
Quakers, and the reign of the Stuarts. The moustache 
was not then fashionable, hence that military append- 
age did not have occasion to meet the disapproval of 
the Quakers until long after; and I have nowhere found 
any notice taken of the moustache in any meeting so 
far. Early in the present century an English fashion 
book remarks : " Young bucks have mounted the 
* Jewish mustachio ' on the upper lip." Parton says: 
*' It is hard to believe in the soundness of a person's 
judgment who turns his collar down, when every one 
turns it up, or who allows his hair to grow long, when 
the rest of mankind wear theirs short." * Even more 
attention has been paid to the morality, so to speak, of 
the hair, than to that of the beard. Political opinions 
expressed themselves with the revolutionary party in 
England in the short hair of the Eoundheads. The 
Puritans, therefore, are to be found with short locks, 
making religious capital out of what were really their 
political sympathies. The early Quakers, always con- 
servative, and never, like the Irish, ^^ agin the Govern- 
ment," wore the long hair of the Royalists (as did the 
French) for some years for fear of resemblance to 
the rebels. A notice published in 1698 mentions a 
delinquent Quaker ^' wearing his own hair straight 
and lank." The Germans wore unkempt beards 
and moustaches. The clergy, like the Quakers, 

* James Parton, " Tke Clothes Mania." 



A STUDY m COSTUME. 95 

liave always been rigid in their ideas of dress, and even 
in the time of Stephen did not wear long hair or 
beards. Wigs, also, which appeared for a short time 
then, were later condemned, along with flowing locks. 
By 148 Y they were wearing long beards, as in earlier 
times, but they were condemned for wearing long hair, 
and charged to cut it " short enough to show the ears.'^ 
Carefully curled and powdered hair was the forerunner 
of the periwig. The clergy held out longest against 
adopting it, and were the last to discard it, except pro- 
fessors of the law. The first cleric to wear an oflScial 
wig was Archbishop Tillotson, in the reign of James II. 
Once introduced, the wig was worn until the time of 
the French Eevolution, just before which a fiine wig 
cost thirty to forty guineas. Bishop Blomfield first set 
the example of wearing his own hair. Archbishop 
Sumner wore a wig so late as 1858, at the wedding of 
the Princess Royal. The church has now discarded the 
wig entirely, while the law is the only profession that 
retains it. The Speaker of the House of Commons is 
most imposing in a full-bottomed wig, while short wigs 
are worn by judges and barristers. The court coach- 
men and some of the servants of the nobility still wear 
the wig as a part of the livery. 

King Charles the Second, lax as he was in his own 
person and costume, and wearing perhaps the heaviest 
periwig in the realm, had, nevertheless, certain notions 
of what was befitting the clergy. We read : 

A letter was written by [him] to the University of Cambridge, 
forbidding its members to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, or read 
their sermons; and when he was at Newmarket, Nathaniel Vin- 
cent, Doctor of Divinity, Fellow of Clare Hall, and Chaplain to 
his Majesty, preached before him in a long periwig and Holland 



96 THE QUAKER. 

sleeves, according to the fashion in use among gentlemen at that 
time. This foppery displeased the King, who commanded the 
Duke of Monmouth, then Chancellor of the University, to cause 
the statutes concerning decency of apparel to be put in execu- 
tion, which was accordingly done.* 

Thomas Story, the well-known Quaker preacher and 
traveler, relates f the following that was told him of 
Peter the Great, after that monarch had attended a 
Meeting of the Quakers at Friedrichstadt (Holstein) in 
1712. The Czar was at one time attending a meeting 
held in a Dutch market place : 

Being rainy Weather, when they were at it, the Czar wear- 
ing his own Hair, pulled off the great Wigg from one of his 
Diikes, and put it on himself, to Cover him from the Rain, mak- 
ing the owner stand bareheaded the while, for it seems he is so 
absolute, that there must be no grumbling at what he does, Life 
and Estate being wholly at his Discretion. 

The portraits of George Fox show him with long 
locks, reaching to the shoulder, but he never wore a 
wig; while on the contrary, William Penn wore as 
many as four in one year. On the subject of his own 
long hair. Fox speaks occasionally in his Journal. In 
1655, when before Major Ceely, during a journey into 
Cornwall, he says of the Major: 

He had with him a silly young priest, who asked us many 
frivolous questions; amongst the rest, he desired to cut my hair 
which was then pretty long; but I was not to cut it, though 
many were offended at it. I told them I had no pride in it, and 
it was not of my own putting on. 

A few months later, at Bristol, when Fox stood in the 
orchard that seems to have been a favorite meeting 
place for both Baptists and Quakers, addressing some 
thousands of people from the great stone that did duty 

*" The Book of Costume, By A Lady of Quality." London, 1846. 
t Thomas Story, Journal, p. 496. (Folio.) 



William Penn. 

After the bust in ivory by ^/Ivanus Bevan. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 97 

as a pulpit, a certain ^' rude, jangling Baptist " began to 
find fault with Fox's long hair; but, he adds, ^' I said 
nothing to him.'' The follomng year, in Wales (1657), 
Fox's Journal records: 

Next morning one called a Lady sent for me, who kept a 
preacher in her house, but I found both her and her preacher 
very light and airy; too light to receive the weighty things of 
God. In her lightness she came and asked me, " If she should 
cut my hair ? " I was moved to reprove her, and bid her cut 
down the corruptions in herself with the sword of the spirit of 
God; so after I had admonished her to be more grave and sober, 
we passed away. Afterward in her frothy mind, she made her 
boast that she " came up behind me and cut off the curl of my 
hair " ; but she spoke falsely. 

The fascinations of the wig proved too much for the 
other Quakers, however, and it soon became quite gen- 
eral among them, as the records of many old meetings 
testify. In 1698 periwigs on men and high headdresses 
on women are condemned. By ITIY so great a declen- 
sion in plainness of dress had taken place, that a paper 
on " Pride, Plainness of Dress," etc., was issued by 
London Quarterly Meeting. This document inveighs 
against '^ men's extravagant Wigs and wearing the hair 
in a beauish manner " ; it grants that " modest, decent 
or necessary (!) " wigs might be allowed; but prevail- 
ing modes are condemned. Some of the old Friends, 
in 1715, mourned, with good reason, we should think, 
that " some of the young people cut off good heads of 
hair to put on long extravagant, gay wigs." The peri- 
wig^ — " f albala," or " furbelow," the dress wig of the 
reign of Queen Anne — was the culmination of the art 
of dress in the life time of the second generation of 
Quakers. Ashton tells us that it was the invention of a 
French courtier to conceal a defect in the shoulders of 



98 y^^ QUAKER. 

the Duke of Burgundy. Its use spread all over Europe, 
and came to America. The true antiquarian holds 
everything worth preserving merely because it has 
been preserved. Hence we are blessed with the long 
list of the Kings' fools of old times, and among them we 
find that of Saxton, the Court fool of Henry VIII., 
who is the first person in modern England recorded to 
have worn a wig. In an account of the Treasurer of the 
King's Chambers in that reign is the entry: " Paid for 
Saxton, the King's fool, for a wig, 20s." * 

The first official notice to be found of the wig 
among the early Quakers is in 1691, when London Six 
Weeks Meeting issued a " testimony " against " those 
that have imitated the world, whether it be men, in 
their extravagant periwigs, or modes in their apparel; 
or whether it be women in their high towering (head) 
dress, gold chains, or gaudy attire; or whether it be 
parents, like old Ely, not sufficiently restraining their 
children therefrom; ... or whether it be in volup- 
tuous feasting without fear, or costly furnitures, and 
too rich adorning of houses," etc.f 

The " Wigges " may well have been called extrava- 
gant. An advertisement of Queen Anne's time, not 
many years before this, appeared in London, to the ef- 
fect that on a certain public coach, " Dancing shoes not 
exceeding four inches in height, and periwigs not ex- 
ceeding three feet ( !) m length, are carried in the coach 
box gratis ! " J One of the dangers of London streets 
in that uncomfortable period of their history has been 
noticed by the poet Gay: 

*Walpole, " Anecdotes of Painting" ; 3d ed., Vol. I., p. 135. 
fBeck and Ball, " History of London Friends' Meetings," p. 117. 
J Ashton, " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," p. 109. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



99 



You'll sometimes meet a fop of nicest tread, 
Whose mantling peruke veils his empty head. 

Him, like the miller, pass with caution by, 
Lest from his shoulder clouds of powder fly. 

Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn; 
High on the shoulder, in a basket borne. 
Lurks the sly boy, whose hand to rapine bred, 
Plucks off the curling honors of the head.* 

The wearing of wigs among the Quakers must have 
been much more common than has been supposed, par- 
ticularly with those somewhat fashionably inclined, if 
we may judge from the large number of minutes and 
other papers against that vanity, as well as the many 
allusions to them in letters of an early date. William 
Cookworthy and Doctors Fother- 
gill and Lettsom have already been 
instanced in describing their 
cocked hats. William Dillwyn, 
in both America and England, 
wears a rather smaller wig than 
theirs. 

The care of the wig was a seri- 
ous matter, and in every way its 
use was in direct opposition to 
Quaker principles of moderation 
and economy. It is therefore the 
more striking to discover how uni- 

*" Trivia." The " Ladies' Answer " to a ballad ridiculing black 
hats and capuchins (published by Percy Soc, Vol. XXVIL, p. 205), 
thus remonstrated with the men : 

•* I wonder what these men can mean 
To trouble their heads with our capuchins? 

Let 'em mind their ruflFs and mufetees : 
Pray, what harm in our black hats is found, 
To make them so much with scandal abound? 
Why can they not let the women alone, 
When idle fashions they have of their own ? 
With ramelie wigs and muffetees." 




William Dillwyn. 

1805. 



LofG. 



100 THE QUAKER. 

versally it was worn by the Friends, completely refuting 
Miss Hill's statement that the Quakers never wore wigs. 
For a time it was not considered decent or respectable 
to appear in public without one ; and the Quakers were 
really less conspicuous by yielding to public opinion, 
than if they had opposed it more strenuously. As in 
the case of the adoption of pantaloons, the pressure of 
circumstances was too much for them ; although we find 
them slow to adopt the wig, and, contrary to their usual 
custom in matters of dress, among the first to discard 
it- The wig was expensive, demanding a great deal of 
time and money in its proper care; it was heavy and 
awkward, and very messy and dirty, particularly when 
powdered; and the periwig in the hands of a careless 
person became a positive source of danger. What 
would a modern Board of Health have said to Pepys' 
entry in his Diary, under date September 3d, 1665 ? 

Put on my coloured silk suit very fine and my new periwigg, 
bought a good while since but durst not wear, because the plague 
was in Westminster when I bought it. It is a wonder what will 
be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwiggs, for no- 
body will dare to buy any haire, for fear of the infection, that it 
had been cut off of the heads of people dead of the plague. 

Foulis, of Kavelston, Scotland, in 1704, pays " for 
a new long periwig, 7 guineas and a halfe.'' His dress 
wig costs " 14, 6s." Scots, or a guinea; a new hat, 7 
Scots; a bob-wig, a guinea.* Allan Ramsay, the poet, 
was a Jack-of-all-trades as well, and among other 
things, he made wigs and " barberized " customers in 
his night-cap. A friend of his, who was a Scotch judge, 
put his wig in a sedan-chair to keep it dry from the 

*H. G. Graham, "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth 
Century." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 101 

rain, and himself quietly walked home. The umbrella 
was still in the future; and a powdered periwig in a 
hard rain meant a ruined pocket book, and a head 
weighed down with a load of paste, drying into a mould 
of plastered hair ! Therefore Gay's timely advice : 

When suffocating mists obscure the morn, 
Let thy worst wig, long used to storms be worn; 
This knows the powdered footman, and with care 
Beneath his flapping hat secures his hair.* 

The " wigge,'' however, had come to stay. Through 
the whole of the eighteenth century it prevailed. The 
" Eanelagh Tail " was the beginning of the end, so to 
speak, toward the period of the American Revolution, 
as is seen in the portraits of some of the English officers 
of that time; the Americans, like Washington, usually 
preferring to wear their ovtu hair tied with a ribbon in 
a knot behind, and occasionally powdered; the fash- 
ionable use of powder disappeared about 1794. 
Napoleon wore his queue and " cadenettes '' in the cam- 
paign in Italy, sacrificing both in Egypt, where he 
prided himself on being unique among his Generals, 
who flattered his fancied resemblance, with short hair, 
to Titus. The " cadenette " f was worn well over the 
left ear, to which the gallants attached a large jewel. 

*" Trivia." 

t" Cadenette." So called from Marechal Cadenet, of France, in 
the seventeenth century. The Century Dictionary defines it as "a love- 
lock, or tress of hair worn longer than the others." 

" L'ondoyant et venteux pennache 
Donnant du galbe 5 ce bravache, 
Un long flocon de poll natte 
En petits anneaux frisottes 
Pris au bout de tresse vermeille 
Descendoit de sa gauche oreille." * 



* Quoted by Quioherat, "Histoire de Costume en France," p. 475." 



1Q2 TEE QUAKER, 

This may be seen in tlie portrait of Charles I. in the 
Louvre, who wears a large pearl. 

The English ladies wore the wig devotedly, probably 
for the same good reason that moved Mrs. Pepys. Her 
husband says (March 13, 1665): "My wife began to 
wear light locks, white almost, which, though it made 
her look very pretty, yet not being natural, vexes me, 
that I will not have her wear them." After the Brigh- 
ton races, the bellman once gave notice to the inhab- 
itants of that place that a lady had lost a wig coming 
from Broadwater. A reward offered brought no evi- 
dence of it. A great while after a bird's nest was dis- 
covered in a tree by some boys, who, climbing to seize 
the treasure, were surprised to find the lost wig, con- 
taining a few sticks, and the maker's name intact. We 
are also told of the discovery of a hedgehog's nest in the 
lost scratch wig of a toper, who dropped it along the 
roadside ! Thomas EUwood had his opinion of the 
women who wore wigs, and did not hesitate to express 
it in most forcible, if not melodious, strains. The friend 
of Milton really waxed indignant: 

" Some Women (Oh the Shame!) like ramping Rigs, 
Ride flaunting in their powder'd Perriwigs; 
Astride they sit (and not ashamed neither) 
Drest up like men in Jacket, Cap and Feather ! " * 

Lady Suffolk (Letters; 1728) says: 

Mrs, Berkeley drives herself in a chair in a morning gown, 
with a white apron, a white handkerchief pinned under her head 
like a nun, a black silk over that, and another white one over the 
hat! 

Nugent (Travels; 1766) describes the Duchess of 
Mechlenburg-Schwerin in '^ a riding-habit, with a bag- 

*Tho8. EUwood, " Speculum Seculi ; era Looking Glass for the Times.'* 



A STUDT IN COSTUME. 103 

wig, and a cocked hat and a feather." He several times 
tells us : " The ladies do wear hats and bag-wigs." 

The " Life and Actions of John Everett " (1729-30), 
tells us that " The Precisions " (as he calls the Quak- 
ers), " for the most part, though they are plain in their 
dress, wear the best of commodities, and though a smart 
toupie is an abomination, yet a bob or a natural of six 
or seven guineas' price, is a modest covering allowed of 
by the saints." 

It is probable that the Quakers affected the " bob " 
wig chiefly. This style of wig was not intended for full 
dress, and the following instance, mentioned by Swift,* 
will well illustrate the distinctions in wig-wearing: 

As Prince Eugene was going with Mr. Secretary to Court, he 
told the Secretary that Hoffman, the Emperor's resident, said to 
his Highness that it was not proper to go to Court without a 
long wig, and his was only a tied up one. " Now," says the 
Prince, " I know not what to do, for I never had a long periwig 
in my life; and I have sent to all my valets and footmen to see 
whether any of them have one, that I might borrow it, but none 
of them has any." But the Secretary said it was a thing of no 
consequence, and only observed by gentlemen ushers. 

John Byrom, on the appearance of the President of a 
Club in a " black bob-wig " wrote: 



"A phrensy? or a periwigmanee, 
That overruns his pericranie ? " f 



The father of Stephen Grellet, an officer in the court 
of Louis XVI., wears a " cauliflower " wig, as shown in 
his silhouette. 

* Swift, " Journal to Stella," January 1, 1712. 

t Leslie Stephen, " Studies of a Biographer," p. 91. 



104 TBE QUAKER. 

The American Puritans in the time of Charles I., 
issued a manifesto against long hair in their colony, 
calling it " an impious custom and a shameful practice 
for any man who has the least care for his soul to wear 
long hair." They enact that it shall be cropped and not 
worn in churches so that those persons who persist in 
this custom " shall have both God and man at the same 
time against them." * The Puritans permitted their 
people to wear out the clothes they brought with them, 
after which the sumptuary laws of Massachusetts went 
into force. These ordered that no slashed clothes were 
to be worn, but that one slash in each sleeve might be 
permitted ! Beaver hats were prohibited. " Immod- 
erate great shoes " were condemned, and four years 
later short shoes are also condemned as leading to " the 
nourishing of pride and exhausting men's estate." In 
1651 the Government was solicitous to preserve the dis- 
tinctions of rank; men must not be too richly dressed, 
nor wear " points " (ribbons with jeweled ends to tie 
up the clothing, often very gay) at the knee. Women 
with an income under two hundred pounds were not to 
wear silk or tiffany hoods. Long hair was condemned 
by the Legislature, and by the Grand Jury; while with 
a curious disregard for consistency, the women were 
condemned who cut and curled theirs. Evidently the 
modern prejudice against long-haired men and short- 
haired women is not so new. Wigs also fell under con- 
demnation, but they prevailed by the end of the seven- 
teenth century, despite the Fathers. 

The sumptuary laws of the early Massachusetts col- 

* See also " Dialogue between Captain Long-Haire and Captain Short- 
Haire." Brit. Mus. Harleian MSS. Pub. by Percy Soc. Vol. XXVII., 
p. 170. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 105 

onists are much like the orders of the Quakers to their 
constituency a little later. What must be emphasized 
all through this study of the Quaker idea of dress is the 
fact that their attention to plainness, and to all the de- 
tails of every day life, was a natural reaction from dog- 
matism, royal prerogative and worldly extravagance. 
It was by no means a characteristic of the Quakers 
alone, but was even more pronounced among the Separ- 
atists, the Mennonites, and the Puritans; and of the 
latter body, none were so arbitrary or narrow 
as those who sought religious freedom in America. 
This is not the place for large quotations from the laws 
of the Massachusetts Colony. But it was the temper of 
the times which led Puritan and Quaker alike, whether 
in England, Holland or America, to attempt to rule the 
consciences of the people in minor matters of daily life, 
and thus to narrow the spiritual outlook of a whole sect. 
The other bodies threw off these small peculiarities, as 
the exigencies of the time in 'New England, for in- 
€tance, demanded an active participation in the life — 
political and social — of the growing commonwealth. 
The Quakers in Pennsylvania, on the contrary, after 
1756, the period of their withdrawal from the public 
arena, no longer participated in the political and social 
developments of the most rapid period of growth in 
that colony; they thereby preserved many little pecu- 
liarities of their most conservative sect, which peculiari- 
ties would necessarily have been rubbed off in contact 
with men of other minds. This must be borne in mind 
regarding the Quakers; for the same method of treat- 
ment would have preserved Puritan customs to us as 
interesting religious fossils to the present day. 



106 TEE QUAKER. 

Wigs were denounced in the Massachusettts legisla- 
ture as early as 1675. John Eliot said that the wars 
and disturbances in the Puritan Meeting House were a 
judgment on the people for wearing wigs ; * and he re- 
luctantly acknowledged that " the lust for wigs is be- 
come insuperable ! " We know that John Wilson and 
Cotton Mather wore them. A young woman of Rhode 
Island, named Hetty Shepard, when visiting Boston, in 
1676, wrote in her diary: 

I could not help laughing at the periwig of Elder Jones, which 
had gone awry. The periwig has been greatly censured as en- 
couraging worldly fashions not suitable tp the wearing of a min- 
ister of the Gospel, and it has been preached about by Mr. 
Mather, and many think he is not severe enough in the matter, 
but rather doth find excuse for it on account of health.f 

Pepys records the first time he put on his wig, which 
was in 1663. By 1716 they were universal, although 
in 1722 the Puritans declared at Hampton that " ye 
wearing of extravagant, superfluous wigges is alto- 
gether contrary to Truth." The I^ew York Assembly 
taxed every wig of human or horse hair mixed. The 
early Colonists, both Baptists and Friends, in 1689- 
1698, unitedly attacked the wearing of periwigs in men 
ani high headdresses in women, the former holding 
that the anticipated appearance of the Fifth Monarchy 
made such frivolity both unnecessary and inappropri- 
ate. Portraits of Endicott, Judge Sewall, and others 
who abjured the wig, show them in small black skull- 
caps. The Judge, who wore a hood, probably did so to 
afford his neck the protection that the wearers of wigs 

♦W. R. Bliss, "Side Glimpses from the Colonial Meeting-house,'* 
p. 97. 

tibid. P. 136. 



Moses Brown, ly 38-1836. 

Engraved by T. Pollock, after the portrait by W, J. Harrii 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 107 

enjoyed with that vanity, and which in the bleak New 
England climate gave the custom more semblance of 
sense than anywhere else. The portrait of Moses 
Brown, the well-known Quaker of Providence, shows 
him in a similar substitute for the wig. 

One of the earliest Quaker minutes in 'New England 
relating to the subject of wigs, occurs at Dartmouth, 
Massachusetts, whose Monthly Meeting records, under 
date First month 21, 1Y19: " A concern lying on this 
meeting Concerning of Friends Wearing of Wigs is re- 
ferred to be proposed to the next Quarterly Meeting." 
Soon after, at the suggestion of the Yearly Meeting at 
Philadelphia, New England Yearly Meeting advised 
(1721) that the important subject of wigs be taken up. 
As a consequence of this action, in Sixth month of that 
year, Dartmouth Monthly Meeting appointed John 
Tucker and Thomas Taber, Jr., " to draw up something 
relating to wigges " ; and Sandwich Quarterly Meeting, 
on First month 19, 1722, saw fit to elaborate its views 
as follows: 

The Sense and Judgment of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting in 
Relation to Wigs is that if any friend by reason of Age or Sick- 
ness have lost their Hair, may wear a small decent Wig as much 
like their owne Hair as may be — but for any friend to cut of 
their Hair on purpose to wear a Wig seems to be more pride 
than Profit and when any professing truth with us go into the 
same, they ought to be proceeded against as disorderly walkers. 

There is evidence of many who became so far " disor- 
derly walkers " as to be quite unable to resist the fasci- 
nations of an artificial superstructure. The same meet- 
ing records some years later ; 

1 mo. 1791: R D hath given way to the Lust of the Eye 

and the Pride of Life in following some of the vain Fations and 
Customs of the times and Continues Therein; Especially that 



108 TEE QUAKER. 

of waring his Hair long which is a shame according to the Apos- 
tles Declaration; also tied with a string [doubtless the worldly 
black ribbon worn by the Father of his Country, an example 
for all loyal citizens to follow] and some other modes that we 
have not unity with; also attended a marriage out of the order 
of Friends; for all which we have Labored with him. 

This case shows the period of transition from the wig 
to the natural hair worn long, tied and powdered. Nan- 
tucket Eecords, dated Seventh month 6, 1803, also re- 
late that r. H. " has deviated from our principles in 
dress, particularly in tying the hair." 

Dartmouth Meeting, in 1733 (Tenth month 17) 

showed its sorrow for one of its members " going from. 

education " in the following minute : 

Whereas, H T . . . hath had his Education among 

Friends but for want of keeping the Spirit of Truth and ye good 
order Established among Friends, hath gone from Education & let 
himself into a Liberty that is not agreeable to our Holy Profes- 
sion, by wearing Divers sorts of Periwigs and his Hat set up on 
three sides like ye Vain Custom of ye World, and also Speaking 
of Words not agreeable to our Profession, & for these his out- 
goings he has been Labored with and Advised to forsake the 
same, but he hath not done it to ye Satisfaction of ye Monthly 
Meeting, but still goes on with his vain conversation, to the 
grief of (the) sincere-hearted among us. Therefore for the clear- 
ing of Truth of Such Reproachful things we are concerned to 
give Forth this as a Public Condemnation. 

Philadelphia, now the most conservative, was at that 

period the most fashionable town in the new country, 

and we find its Quaker Meeting struggling with the 

wig-mania some time before there is any record of its 

appearance among that body in E^ew England. Such 

minutes as the following are not uncommon : 

It being spoken to at this Meeting as a grief upon some 
friends, That many comes out of England with fashionable 
Cloathes and great Perriwigs, which, if care be not taken may 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 109 

(its feared) tend to Corrupt the Youth of this place. This 
Meeting recommends the same [to the next Quarterly Meeting.] 
—Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 26 of 2 mo. 1700. 

The friends appointed by the preparative Meeting to bring in 
the testimony of Ancient Friends concerning fashionable cloath- 
ing and Long Perriwigs, have done it, and they are desired to 
recommend the same to the next Quarterly Meeting. — Do., 30 
of 3 mo. 1701. 

Likewise the Friends appointed to Enquire into the Conversa- 
tion and Clearness of Abraham Scott, Report that they cannot 
find but that he is clear in relation to marriage and debts, but 
as to his orderly walking amongst Friends, they cannot say 
much for him on that account. Yet upon his appearance before 
this meeting, making some acknowledgment of Extraordinary 
Powdering of Ms Periwig, which is the chief (thing) Friends 
had against him, and hoping to take more care for the future, 
Samuel Carpenter and Anthony Morris are desired to write him 
a Certificate and sign the same on behalf of this Meeting. — Do., 
25 of 5 mo. 1701. 

Under the same date we find: 

Some course might be taken with the Taylors that make pro- 
fession of Truth, and are found in the practice of making such 
fashionable cloathing as Tends to the Corruption of Youth. 

They do not seem, however, to have gone the lengths 
of Dublin Meeting: 

28 of 6 mo. 1702; Philadelphia Monthly Meeting desires that 
the proposition of the last Preparative meeting about cutting of 
hair & wearing of perriwigs, may be laid before the next Quar- 
terly Meeting. . . . 17th. of 6 mo. 1703; Ordered that friends in 
their particular meetings make inquiry if there be any in the 
use of perriwigs extravagantly or unnecessary. 

We also find the following, in an Epistle of Philadel- 
phia Yearly Meeting to the Quarterly and Monthly 
Meetings, dated Seventh month 18, 1723, " on third 
day as usual '' : 

As to such young people who have been educated in the way 
of Truth, or make profession with us, if they do not continue 



110 ^^^ QUAKER. 

in well doing, but frequent scandalous or tipling houses, and 
delight in vain and evil company and communications or shall 
use gaming, or drink to excess, or behave rudely or such like 
enormities or shall decline our plain manner of speech or imi- 
tate the vain antick modes and customs of the times — the men 
with their extravagant wigges, and hattes set up with three 
corners; and the women in their immodest dresses, and other 
indecencies. It is our advice and earnest desire that parents and 
guardians, whilst such youth are under their tuition, do restrain 
them, and not indulge or maintain them in such pride or ex- 
travagances. But if they will not be otherwise reformed, then 
the Overseers or other Frd's shall use their endeavours to re- 
strain them, and if that cannot prevail, let the offenders (after 
dealing and admonitions), have notice to be at the next suc- 
ceeding monthly meeting, in order to be further dealt withall 
in the Wisdom of Truth, according to the Discipline. 

It is a curious fact that wigs were discarded with 
more apparent reluctance in democratic America than 
in England. To appear on the streets of 'New York, 
about 1800, without a wig was scarcely decent, and 
Par ton tells us that " many men surrendered the pig- 
tail only with life." In 1786, Ann Warder's Philadel- 
phia nephews wore their hair still in the queue, a 
fashion quite gone out at that date in London. She 
says: " I threatened the Execusion of these Pig-Tails 
before I will submit to introduce them as my nephews 
in our country, which they both acknowledge will be 
cheerfully resigned.'' * 

^ In the year 1795, Martha Kouth, the English Friend 
who wore the first " plain bonnet " in America, at- 
tended a meeting of the settlers in the Alleghany 
mountains, " to which," she says, " came many Men- 
onists and Dunkers. Some of the Elders wear their 
beards, as they say, according to ancient custom, but do 

*Ann Warder, MS. Journal. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. m 

not enjoin it as a part of their religion." * These same 
German Baptists argued that Adam came into being 
fully equipped with a luxuriant beard; and that Aaron's 
reached to the hem of his garment. They; also quoted 
Leviticus 19: 27. In respect to Adam, they were 
hardly behind the Kev. George Wickes, the Puritan di- 
vine, who lived during the fashions in dress of the Ho- 
garth period. He died in 1744. A sermon that he 
preached at Harwichtown has been preserved to us, and 
is quoted by Bliss. The following extracts seem appro- 
priate : 

Adam, so long as he continued in innoceney, did wear his own 
hair and not a Perriwig. Indeed, I do not see how it was possi- 
ble that Adam should dislike his own hair, and therefore cut it 
ojff, so that he might wear a Perriwig, and yet have continued 
innocent. . . . The children of God will not wear Perriwigs after 
the Resurrection. . . . Elisha did not cover his head with a 
Perriwig, altho' it was bald. To see the greater part of Men 
in some congregations wearing Perriwigs is a matter of deep 
lamentation. For either all these men had a necessity to cut off 
their Hair, or else not. If they had a necessity to cut off their 
Hair, then we have reason to take up a lamentation over the 
sin of our first Parents which hath occasioned so many Persons in 
one Congregation to be sickly, weakly crazy Persons. Oh, Adam, 
what hast thou done! f 

/ 

Elizabeth Drinker was a Quaker lady of the last cen- ^ 

tury, in Philadelphia, to whose keen powers of observa- 
tion we are greatly indebted for much valuable infor- 
mation. She writes, in 1794: "Two bearded men 
drank tea here/' recording the fact in much the same 
way that she had noted the passing by of an elephant, 
then a rare sight, a short time before. :[: The Puritan was 

* Martha Eouth, Journal, p. 139. 

■{■W. R. Bliss, "Side Glimpses from the Colonial Meeting-house," 
p. 142. 

X Elizabeth Drinker, Journal, 



112 THE QUAKER. 

everywhere more mimerous than the Quaker; and for 

this reason, his peculiarities occupy a more conspicuous 

place in literature than those of the latter. His long^ 

hair has been noted by no less a hand than that of Ben^ 

Jonson. Brother Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, the Puritan in 

" Bartholomew Fair/' is made by the dramatist to say: 

For long hair, it is an ensign of Pride, a banner; and the 
■world is full of these banners, very full of banners * 

The famous picture of King Charles I., at St. John's^ 

College, Oxford, written in the Psalms, in the smallest 

possible handwriting that can be deciphered, was thus 

apostrophized by one Jeremiah Wells : 

The Presbyterian maxim holds not here 
That calls locks impious if below the ear; 
When every fatall clip lops off a prayer, 
And he's accurs'd, that dare but cut thy hair. 

There are a few rare Quaker pamphlets against wigs. 
The following extracts from two of the most unique 
will serve to illustrate the kind of literature devoted ta 
the subject. As usual, in such cases, it is more attrac- 
tive to the antiquarian than the scholar: 

A Testimony against Periwigs and Peri-wig making anix 
Playing on Instruments of Music among Christians, or 

ANY other in the DAYS OF THE GoSPEL. BeING SEVERAL 

Reasons against those things. By one who for Gooi> 
Conscience sake hath denyed and forsaken them. 

John Mulliner. 1677. 

This curious pamphlet relates the suffering of mind 
undergone by Mulliner, who was at one time a barber 
of Northampton, in regard to making " borders," wigs 
and periwigs for his trade. He says : 

As to my Employment of Periwig making, it is more than 
twelve years since I began to make them, and much might be 

*ActIII..Sc.l. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 113 

said for the making of them by some, yet much questioning and 
reasoning have I had within myself for some time — so that at 
some times I have been troubled when I have been making of 
them. 

He had apparently argued to himself: 

There is hardly any man but is desirous of a good head of 
Hair, and if Nature doth not afford it, if there be an art to make 
a Decent Wig or Border, what harm is that? As for those whose 
hair is wasted, fallen and gone oflf their Heads through infirmity 
of Body, and for want of it do find that their health is impaired, 
or lessened, if such do wear short Borders for their health sake, 
and for no other End or Cause Whatsoever, I judge them not; 
but let none make a pretense that they wear Borders or Wigs 
for their Health, when in Reality, another thing is the Cause. 

And let all those who have Hair growing upon their heads, 
sufficient to serve them, I mean what is really needful or useful, 
be content therewith, and not find fault with their own hair and 
cut it off, and lust after and put on others Hair. 

As I had been a publick Professor of this Employment for some 
time, I must bear my Testimony against them; and that was, I 
should send for my two men, as I had instructed in that way, 
and tell them how I was troubled and take a Wig and burn it 
before them, as a Testimony for God against them. ... So, ac- 
cording to the pain and sorrow that lay hard upon me, I gave 
up to do it, and I thank God I have much ease and comfort of 
mind since I have done it. 

I was a great lover of Musick, and many times as I have been 

thinking of God and of the condition I was in^ it would have 
brought trouble upon me; so that many times I have took my 
Cittern or Treble Viol or any instrument as I had most delight 
ill, thinking to drive away these Thoughts, and I have been so 
troubled, as I have been playing, that I have laid my instrument 
down and have reasoned with myself, . . . and fell a crying to 
God, and my music began to be a burden. ... I would fain have 
sold my Instruments, but that I had not freedom in my mind to 
do; for if I did, those who bought them would have made use of 
them as I did, and I thought I could not be the cause of it; so 



114 TEE QUAKER. 

I took as many as I suppose cost forty shilling, and Burned 
Them, and had great Peace in my mind in doing of it, which la 
more to me than all the pleasures in this world.* 

A Declaration against Wigs and Periwigs. 
By Eichard Richardson. 

Jer. 22 : 24. PhU. 3 : 3 

Several Testimonies having been given by Friends against Pride 
in Apparel relating to Women; 'tis considerable whether Women 
being reflected on, may not reasonably reflect on Men, their arti- 
ficial frizzled Hair; for Women's Hairs on Men's Heads swarm 
like one of Egypt's Plagues, and creep in too much upon and 
among Christians. And a Nehemiah is desirable, that might 
pluck off this strange Hair of strange Women lusted after. 
(Nehem. 13: 25.) And the Heathen may rise up against us, for 
an Ambassador coming before a Senate with false Hair, a Grave 
Senator said, What credit is to be had to him whose very Locks 
do lye? And if, upon necessity the Locks of any amongst us do 
lye, 'tis fit they should lye to purpose, viz., so as not to be dis- 
covered from native Locks! For to seek to deceive so as to be 
perceived, argues as much want of Wit as of Sincerity; and a 
want of an Endeavor in it not to be perceived, argues a want of 
Humility and Moderation! 

If Heat causes Headach, sure a Wig under a Hat is not a 
means to cure it. The Prophet Elisha likely had neither, when 
Bethel Boys cried, A Bald Head! 

John Mulliner, A Friend about Northamton, a Wig-maker, left 
off his trade and was made to burn one in his Prentices sight and 
Print against it. John Hall, a Gentleman of Northumberland, 
being Convinced, sitting in a meeting, was shaken by the Lord's 
Power, pluck'd off and threw down his Wig; so 'tis considerable 
whether care may not be taken, that conceited conterfit [coun- 
terfeit] Calvinists may not continue amongst us, nor that any 
of the people of God make themselves Bald for Pride now, as 
they did of old for Sorrow. (Levit. 21. 5.) 

The Apostles Peter and Paul forbad ornament of Plaited Hair 
(as ours translate; Crisp'd or Curl'd, as others) and the An- 

* This was reprinted in 1708. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 115 

cients write, that they both had Bald-Heads, and if they should 
have covered them with Women's Hair, would they not have re- 
torted Was that the cause, Peter and Paul, that you had us leave 
off our Locks, that you and such like might get them yourselves 
to make Peri- wigs of? 

And then Friend Richard's feelings overcame him 
entirely, and he says: 

Who can refrain to fall into a Poetical Vein, and Paint out in 
such sad Colours, that it may look as ugly as it doth. For a 
glorying in a Shame as an Ornament, Sharppens a Pen to describe 
it to make it appear as it is. Difficile et Satyram non scribere! 

Metamorphoses. 

The manner of this Age unmannerly 
Is, Man unmanning. Women's Hair to buy. 
Dub Poles and Joles Dame Venus* knights to be. 
Smock-coat and Petticoat-Breech their Livery; 
Scarce man-like fac'd, though Woman-like in Hair, 
As sting-tail'd Locusts in the Vision were; 

And like unto the Phrygian Ganymede, 

Or as Tiresias Femaliz'd indeed; 

Or one that (sith he would a Woman be) 

Put Period to Assyrian Monarchy. 

Hair in a Night turn'd Hew, of old 'tis said, 

An old man young, a Boy a Girl, was made; 

Elders so now transform'd to Girls appear. 

And Girls to Boys by their short curtail'd Hair. 

By bulls, some seem 'ith twilight turn'd to owls. 

As antique Harpyes, or some new Night Fowles. 

As charming Sirens (bate their ugly Hair) 

Having their Arms, Necks, Brests, Backs, Shoulders bare. 

Nay, for their Knights rich Garters some prepare. 

While long hair was the fashion for men, the col- 
lar was unpretending, and an inch or two its utmost 
height. Henry YIII., who introduced short hair, kept 
up a simple band of this sort; and no lace was worn. 
Bands for the neck were of Italian cut-work, costing as 



116 TEE QUAKER, 

mucli as £60. " Partelets " were of velvet or lawn, 
larger than bands, and worn like the earlier " gorgets " 
of embroidered lawn, velvet or Venetian work.* 
Erench gentlemen began to wear collarettes or frilled 
ruffles about 1540.f The shirts of this period were of 
very fine holland, with no neckband, but a neckcloth, 
the most stylish being the " Steenkirk,'' after the bat- 
tle of that name. Starch reached the extreme of its use 
or abuse in the enormous ruffs of Queen Elizabeth's 
reign.:]: Small ruffs were still worn in the early Quaker 
times, but they were less starched. Aurelia, in Jasper 
Mayne's play, " The City Match," when her Puritan 
maid has become worldly, and enters her presence in 
fashionable attire, exclaims: 

O, miracle ! out of 

Your little ruff, Dorcas, and in the fashion — 

Dost thou hope to be saved? § 

and again: 

Ere I'll be tortured thus, I'll get dry palms 
With starching, and put on my smocks myself. || 

Quarlous, in " Bartholomew Fair,'' says of an ac- 
quaintance : 

Ay, there was a blue-starch woman of the name; 

and Nightingale, in the same play, sells " A Ballad of 
Goose-green starch and the Devil, i.e, a Goodly ballad 
against Pride, showing how a Devil appeared to 
a lady which was starching her ruff by night." Yel- 
low starch was most in vogue in England. Old Stubbes 

*Georgiana Hill, " History of English Dress," Vol, I., p. 187. 

tQuicherat, *' Histoire de Costume en France," p. 175. 

X One Mrs. Turner introduced yellow starch from France with great 
success. By a dreadful irony of fate she was hanged for the murder of 
Sir Thomas Overbury in a starched ruflf ! 

§ActIV.,Sc. 3. 

II Act II., Se.l. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 117 

scoffs at " the liquor which they call starch, wherein the 
devil hath willed them to dye their ruffs ! " * He says 
of their " great ruffes and supportasses " : 

They haue great and monstrous ruffes, made either of cam- 
brike, holland, lawne, or els of some other the finest cloth that 
can be got for money, whereof some be a quarter of a yarde 
deepe, yea, some more, very few lesse, so that they stande a 
full quarter of a yearde (and more) from their necks hanging 
ouer their shoulder points in steade of a vaile. But if ^olus 
with his blasts, or Neptune with his storms, chaunce to hit vpon 
the crasie barke of their brused ruffes, then they goe flip flap 
in the winde like ragges that flew abroade lying vpon their 
shoulders like the dish cloute of a slut. But wot you what? 
the deuill, as he, in the fulnesse of his malice, first inuented these 
great ruffes, so hath he now found out also two great pillers to 
beare vp and maintaine this his kingdome of pride withal (for 
the deuill is kyng and prince ouer al the children of pride) The 
one arch or piller, whereby his kyngdome of great ruffes is vnder- 
propped, is a certaine kind of liquid matter, whiche they call 
starch, wherein the deuill hath willed them to washe and diue 
their ruffes well, whiche, beeying drie, will then stande stiff and 
inflexible about their necks. The other piller is a certaine deuice 
made of wiers crested for the purpose whipped ouer either with 
gold thred, siluer, or silke, and this he calleth a supportasse or 
vnderpropper ; this is to bee applied round about their neckes 
vnder the ruffe, vpon the out side of the bande, to beare vp the 
whole frame and bodie of the ruffe, from fallying and hangying 
doune. 

Euffs gradually went out, clergymen and judges be- 
ing the last to abandon them, and embroidered muslin 
or lace collars in Van Dyck style came in. These were 
worn with no coat collar whatever, in order that they 
might lie flat on the shoulders ; and this is the collar of 
the time of Penn, whose coat, as we have seen, was 
coUarless. His sovereign's coat was ornamented with 
a deep lace collar, reaching to the point of the shoul- 

*" Anatomie of Abuses," 1586. 



118 THE QUAKER. 

der, under which any collar of cloth had been impos- 
sible. Therefore, when William Penn cast off his laces, 
he laid bare his collarless state, and it required one 
hundred and fifty years to develop the straight coat cut 
of his successors. 

But the form of neckwear known as " bands " was 
no sooner introduced than it commended itself at once 
to the Quaker, and was forthwith adopted. Bands are 
the only item of civil dress that the clergy still retain 
to-day, surviving in the gown and bands of the Presby- 
terian Church, as those who know Dr. Parkhurst's 
famihar figure will recall. Without entering into the 
question of its authenticity as a portrait. Sir Peter 
Lely's painting of George Fox in bands is rather strik- 
ing in connection with our present association of that 
portion of the costume with the clergy. The Bevan 
portrait of Penn shows him in bands, as does that of 
Milton at the age of eighteen. The latter wears the 
'^ falling-band." The bands, worn very soon by most 
Quakers, gave them another peculiarity among the 
fashionable lace and embroidered collars; and the public 
was quick to make a hit. An anti-Quaker tract of 
1671 * says: " A Quaker is a vessel of Phanaticism 
drawn off to the Lees; a common shore [sewer] of 
Heresie, into which most extravagant opinions at last 
disembogue and enter; the fag end of Keformation 
marked with a sullen meagre look and this character- 
istic ^ Thou.' . . . [He] decries superstition, yet idolizes 
Garbs and phrases. You may know him by his diminu- 
tive Band that looks like the forlorn hope of his shirt 

* " Character of a Quaker in His True and Proper Colors ; or, The 
Clownish Hypocrite Anatomized." London, 1671. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 119 

crawling out at his collar, for his purity consists only in 
his dress, and his religion is not to speak like his neigh- 
bors." 

Bands were worn by the less fashionable, and by lit- 
erary and professional men, after they ceased to be 
universally popular. The Dutch were very partial to 
them; and the portrait of the painter Le Febvre, with 
his pupil, in the Louvre, shows both in bands. 

Walpole, in his " Anecdotes of Painting,'' thus de- 
scribes the Quakers: 

A long vest and cloke of black or some other grave colour, 
with a collar of plain linen called a turnover, and a broad band, 
with the hair closely cropped, distinguished the men of every 
rank, and the ladies equally excluded lace, jewels and braided 
locks. 

At one time bands had a certain political signifi- 
cance, and on their introduction into Ireland, in 1728, 
the following " Answer to the Band Ballad, by a Man 
Milliner,'' declared: 

The town is alarm'd and seems at a stand. 
As if both the Pope and the Devil would land 
To doom this whole Isle in the shape of a band — 
Which nobody can deny, deny ; which nobody can deny. 

The bands and lace tie following it were succeeded by 
the white stock; then came the muslin cravat, which 
was always a favorite with the Quaker, and a graceful 
dress at all times; to this succeeded the modern rule of 
the starched shirt collar, almost as uncompromising in 
some of its forms as anything worn in the days of 
Queen Elizabeth. Stiff linen bands, or soft cambric 
ones, were worn by all Puritans. We find four plain 
bands and three falling ones supplied to each settler of 
Massachusetts Bay. Sumptuary laws forbade embroid- 



130 THE QUAKER. 

ery. The Judges of the Supreme Court wore bands 
when on the bench until this century. The linen col- 
lar, turned down over the doublet, was known as the 
"falling band." 




Gabkiel-Marc-Antoine de Gbellet, 
father of Stephen Grellet. 1789. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE QX7AKERESS. 



Mistress Anne Lovely. — "Isn't it monstrously redicalous 
that they should desire to impose their quaking dress upon mo 
at these years ? "When I was a child, no matter what they made 
me wear ; but now — " 

Betty.—" I would resolve against it, madam ; I'd see 'em 
hanged before I'd put on the pinch' d cap again." 



Mistress Lovely. — " Are the pinch'd cap and formal hood th« 
emblems of sanctity? Does your virtue consist in your dreas, 
Mrs. Prim?" 

Mrs. Centlivre: "A Bold Stroke for a Wife." 



When she to silent meeting comes, 

With apron green before her, 
She simpers so like muffle plums, 

'T would make a Jew adore her. 

Old Verse. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



THE QUAKERESS. 




ON^CONFOKMITY has nowhere ex- 
pressed itself more fully than in 
Quaker dress. There is unconscious 
satire in the old Quaker plea that no 
change has crept into their institu- 
tions ; in regard to their dress, at least, 
this is all a mistake. But one creature 
exists in which no change, which is the 
other name for growth, has been go- 
ing on, and that is the fossil. On the contrary, an 
instance of adaptability in dress on the part of the 
Quakers is their prompt acceptance of the shawl, 
which, at its introduction, near Kevolutionary times, 
was at once seized upon as eminently adapted to Quaker 
needs. Possibly the most notable instance of adher- 
ence to a style is that of Mrs. I^Toah, in the famous toy 
ark. It will be remembered that she wears high stays, 
with a very waspish waist, and her petticoats are ex- 
tended by what are evidently padded hips. The head- 
dress crowning her rather conventional features — so 
far as she has any lineaments at all — is a most frivolous 
*' Tam o' Shanter/' — or is it a flat hat, rather circum- 
scribed in extent ? At any rate, here is a lady who has 
dressed just the same for several hundred years, and 
we should weep to see her change now. 



124 ^^^ QUAKER. 

It would be very valuable to us to learn what was 
the exact costume worn by Margaret Fell (afterward 
Margaret Fox) and her talented and interesting daugh- 
ters. We only know how her contemporaries dressed, 
and have a few details of the family wardrobe in those 
Swarthmoor account books which still exist. That they 
wore the popular style of dress, without adornments, is 
altogether likely, for she has left on record her disap- 
proval of anything tending to uniformity among the 
Friends. We shall not be far wrong, I think, if we im- 
agine George Fox's wife in a hood of black wadded 
silk, a short, full skirt, standing well out from the hips, 
and held in position by an array of petticoats (for she 
would never have worn the false hips then in vogue); 
a kerchief of muslin, over a low bodice, stiff and long 
in the waist, and laced with many eyelets, its cord of 
blue or white or black, depending upon whether her 
gown were red or blue ; her shoes heavy, low and square- 
toed, with heels that may have been another color from 
the shoe itself, but not the fashionable red, and higher 
than we should now care to wear upon the street. Her 
cloak, whose color we dare not speculate upon, was of 
substantial cloth, with a hood for ornament when not 
in use, as it often was, particularly in her long journeys 
on horseback from county to county attending public 
meetings. She may have called it a " capuchin,'' for 
that was the form of cloak then coming into wear. But 
we are not privileged to possess descriptions of her per- 
sonal appearance nor of her style of dress, as is the 
case with both of her distinguished husbands. We 
learn from one or two references to old letters of 
ancient worthies, that she was fair and comely, and 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 125 

Maria Webb says that she had a " beaming counte- 
nance/' and a " most sweet, harmonious voice." But 
with these slight references we are fain to be content. 
A few items of clothing touched upon in the family 
letters give us our only clue to the style of dress worn 
by the women of the Swarthmoor circle. John Rous, 
the son-in-law of Margaret Fell Fox, writes her from 
London in 1670: 

Yesterday, by Jolin Seott, the Preston carrier, I sent a small 
box of sugar for present use, directed for Thomas Green. The 
hasp was sealed as this letter is, and in it was a white mantle, 
and a white sarsanet hood for thee, and some playthings for the 
children.* 

The following items from a portion of the old 
Swarthmoor Account Book of 1673, which is quoted 
from at length in " The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall," 
are very interesting for the light they throw upon the 
style of dress in the Fell family. The precious old book 
is in Sarah FelFs handwriting. Sarah was the eldest 
daughter of the household, and the head of affairs and 
its business manager, to whom, after her marriage with 
William Meade, the whole family, including her 
mother, repeatedly appealed in despair to clear up the 
confusion into which Swarthmoor affairs immediately 
fell after she left the home. In some cases the cost of 
the articles given is illegible: 
By money pd. Thos. Benson for dying 2 pr. stock- 
ings sky colour, of mine, and a petticoat red, of 

mine (Defaced) 

By money pd. for a hat for little Mary Lower I 

gave her 6 

For 20 yds. Cumberland cloth 2 9 

Paid for a vizard mask for myself & a hat (Defaced) 

* Maria Webb, " The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall," p. 231. 



y 



126 TEE QUAKER. 

By money pd. for 1 yd. and nail of black paragon 

for apron for self 2 

Paid for leading strings for little Margaret Lower 2 

By money paid for a blue apron and strings for my- 
self 1 3 

By money pd. for a black hood for sister Susan 4 

By money pd. for a black alamode whiske* for sis- 
ter Rachel 2 

By money paid for a round whiske for sister Su- 
sanna 4 4 

Do. for a little black whiske for myself 1 10 

1678. 

By money pd. for clogging a pair of clogs and for 
nailes to mend shoes for my boy, Tom Harrison, 
(own account) 5% 

Sarah (Fell) Meade wrote to her sister, Kachel 
Abraham, from London, under date " The 19th. of 
10th. [December] 1683 '^ 

I have endeavoured to fit my dear Mother with black cloth for 
a gown, which is very good and fine, and as much as Jno. Rich- 
ards saith is enough to the full, 5 yards and half, and what 
materials as he thought was needful to send down, vizt. silk, 
both sewing and stitching, gallowne ribbon, and laces, and I was 
very glad to know what she wanted, for it has been in my mind 
a pretty while to send her and you something, and I could not 
tell what she might need or might be most serviceable to her 
was the reason of my thus long forbearance, and so I desire 
her acceptance of it, and yours of the small things underwritten: 

3 pair doe skin gloves such as are worn in winter, for mother, 
sister Lower and thyself; the thickest pair for mother if they fit 
her, but that I leave to you to agree on as you please. 

1 pair same sort of gloves for brother Abraham. 

4 ells of Holland, for sister Lower and thyself, each two ells. 

2 pots of balsam, one for my mother, the other for sister 
Yeamans. 

3 pocket almanacs, for sister Yeamans, sister Lower and thy- 
self. 

* Whisk, " A neckerchief worn by women in the seventeenth century. 
Also called ' falling-whisk,' apparently to distinguish it from the ruff.'* 
—•'The Century Dictionary." 



J. STUDY IN COSTUME. 127 

1 muslin nightrail for sister Yeamans, which she sent for. 
100 needles, of which half for sister Yeamans, which she sent 
for, the other half hundred for sister Lower and thyself. 

There is (in the box) for sister Lower, which she sent to sister 
Susanna to buy her, a colored stuff manteo, cost 14s., and 11 
yards and half of black worsted stuff, at 2s. per yard, cost 223. 
Sister Susanna exchanged the old 20s. piece of gold as she desired, 
which yielded 23s. 6d., so she is out of purse for her 12s. 6d. 
Black stuff was worse to get than colored, which is now mostly 
worn; but she hath done as well as she can, and hopes it will 
please her; its a strong, serviceable stuff. 

Mary Frith presents her service to (sister Yeamans), and 
takes it kindly that she should send her her fillet. 

I am thy affectionate sister, S. M. 

(P. S.) 

We advise you to make my mother's cloth gown without a 
skirt, which is very civil, and usually so worn, both by young 
and old, in stiffened suits.* 

These were all women of cultivation and good taste, 
and the sister in London kept them posted as to the 
correct mode of dress, with an evident desire that their 
mother should not be allowed to appear singular in her 
garb, although no time was wasted by any of them on 
the frivolities of dress. The simple, homely view 
of the family life presented in these and other let- 
ters of the Fells, allows us to clothe them with a per- 
sonality that gives them a living charm when we meet 
them again in the larger arena of public life, in court or 
prison. Making " my mother's gown without a skirt " 
is probably making it vdthout an overdress of any 
sort, the full, stiffened petticoats that were then the 
mode requiring none. The Quaker women had been 

♦Maria Webb, " The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall," p. 92. 



128 'P^E QUAKER. 

wearing the short overskirt represented in the Quaker- 
ess Tub-Preacher,* and it was evidently to this that the 
reference was made. The " whisk " above referred to 
is the forerunner of the handkerchief worn bj Eliza- 
beth Fry and her successors ever since. 

Sometimes the modest dress of the Quakers was sad- 
ly misrepresented, and when the course of true love in 
the case of Thomas Lower and Mary, daughter of 
Judge Fell and Margaret (afterward Fox), did not at 
first run quite smoothly, certain persons at Plymouth 
circulated a description of her and her sister that 
Thomas hastened to deny. He writes Mary: 

At Plymouth both thou and sister Yeamans were painted 
with naked necks, and in costly array, until T. S. [Thomas Salt- 
house] and I deciphered you, and quite defaced the former coun- 
terfeit by representing you in a more commendable dress. The 
authors of these unsavory belchings I cannot fully discover, but 
that which brings report will also carry. 

The Fells lived in days of more extravagance of taste 
than we, although a recent writer on modern dress 
asserts that women to-day appear " one season like 
wriggling worms in lampshades, and the next, fes- 
tooned and befringed in the upholstery of a four-post 
bedstead.'' f 

'Eo wonder that Fox, to whom it must have been as 
gall and wormwood to be obliged to touch upon the 
subject at all, cried out, in a moment of wrath and in- 
dignation, to the women of his day, " Away with your 
long slit peaks behind in the skirts of your waistcoats,'' 
" your skimming-dish hats," " unnecessary buttons," 

*See illustration, "The Quaker Meeting." 

t Lady Gwendolen Ramsden, " The Nineteenth Century," for Novem- 
ber, 1900, On Extravagance in Dress." 



Gulielma Springett, i644-i6g4. 

First Wife of William Fenn. 

Fro7fi an engraving after the original painting on glass, in possession 
of descendants of Henry Stuan, of Dorking, Englf^nc^ . 




^V.\ 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 129 

" short sleeves/' " short black aprons," " vizzards/' 
" your great needless flying scarfs, like colours [flags] 
on your backs." But they went on, the world's people; 
and the Quakers of Queen Anne's time saw fashions 
come and go that beside the beautiful costumes of the 
great days of Van Dyck and Bol, seem the very embodi- 
ment of grotesqueness — the hoop, the periwig, and the 
tight stays. Finally, in 1770, an Act was passed by 
Parliament to the eflect that 

All women, of whatever age, rank, profession, degree, wheth- 
er virgins, maids or widows, that shall from and after such Act 
impose upon seduce or betray into matrimony, any of his Ma- 
jesty's male subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, 
artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron-stays, hoops, high- 
heeled shoes, etc., shall incur the penalty of the law now in force 
against witchcraft, and like misdemeanors, and that the marriage 
upon conviction shall be null and void!* 

Of the two wives of William Penn we possess a fine 
portrait of the first — the fair Gulielma Springett, 
whose life and love are one of the sweet romances of 
Quakerism. She is represented in the silk hood worn 
by the mother and the wife of Cromwell, and by most 
of the nobility and gentry of England in her day, with 
the border of a dainty muslin cap showing beneath. 
Her brocaded gown is short and very full at the hips; 
the pointed laced bodice cut low in the neck, and filled 
in with a kerchief; the elbow sleeves turned back in a 
large loose cuff, beneath which fine muslin under- 
sleeves appear. It is probable that her dress does not 
represent the costume of the plainest Friends of her 
day, any more than did that of her distinguished hus- 
band. But the dress of contemporary modish ladies 

*Georgiana Hill, " Women in English Life," Vol. I., p. 317. 



130 THE QUAKER, 

with which we are able to compare it is so vastly more 
elaborate than ^^ Guli's," that we at once recognize the 
presence of Quaker moderation, combined with taste 
and good sense, such as we should expect in the daugh- 
ter of Lady Springe tt. Hannah Callowhill, the second 
wife of William Penn, brought up in the rather austere 
community of Friends in Bristol, whose mercantile at- 
mosphere did not foster the arts or the graces of life 
among her immediate family or associates, represents 
an older woman, in sober attire, whose gowns and 
aprons were of a plainer hue, and whose whole mien 
was one of seriousness and sobriety. The portrait that 
we have of her is also taken in the hood, and there is no 
evidence of any cap underneath.* 

The Quakeresses were not unfamiliar in their modest 
garb to the lords and ladies about the Court. Seven 
of them, in 1765, went together to wait upon Queen 
Charlotte, " when her Majesty ordered her lady-in-wait- 
ing to compliment each of them, which they returned 
in a sensible and modest manner. '^ f Margaret Fell, 
both before and after her marriage to George Fox, 
made various visits to the Court, usually accompanied 
by another woman Friend. 

Aberdeen and Dublin seem to have been from the 



*The original of the portrait of Gulieltna Penn is a painting on glass 
in the possession of the descendants of Henry Swan, of Holm wood, Dork- 
ing, England, who died in 1796. The copy from which this present 
example is taken, forms the frontispiece to the " Penns and Penningtons 
of the Seventeenth Century," by Maria Webb. 

The portrait of Hannah Penn is from a painting in the Banqueting 
Room of Independence Hall, Philadelphia. This is a copy in its turn of a 
crayon drawing in possession of a descendant of Francis Place, the artist, 
who lived near Darlington. Place is said to have taken the portrait dur- 
ing one of the frequent visits of the Penns to their sister, who lived near 
him. 

t British Museum "Scrap Book " (4152, H, 5). 



»i-*W ■ .:m^*^ >-S«^ig^, i 



Hannah Callow hill, 1664-17 26. 

Second Wife of William Penn. 

Orio-inal paintino at Blackwell Hall, Counfy Durham, England, o 
Copy in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 131 

first the meetings most anxious to keep their member- 
ship as plain as possible. The former issued an early 
" Testimony " to the effect that '^ no colored plaids be 
worn any more, but either mantles or low hoods." An 
order prohibiting plaids, in the land of the Scotch, did 
violence to long-cherished traditions of patriotism and 
clan-feeling, and the Aberdeen Friends wasted many 
years in trying to enforce arbitrary laws of dress. The 
Friends give gaiety as the ground of their objection to 
plaids, and herein show their want of tact, for this gar- 
ment had fallen under condemnation for another reason 
than its fashion among the Scotch in the town of Glas- 
gow, where the Kirk Session Books say: * ^^ Great dis- 
order hath been in the Kirk by reason of women sitting 
with their heads covered in time of sermon, sleeping.'' 
This led to condemnation of hoods, under whose 
friendly protection the Scotch women could indulge in 
a refreshing nap during the interminable sermons of the 
Scotch clergy. Thirty years later, in 1637, the plaids 
worn by the plain folk over the head were condemned 
for the same reason, and not, as has been thought, for 
the gay coloring. 

The clothing of the common people, as well as of the 
more well-to-do, was spun by the women of the family, 
and woven by the village " wabster." The spinning- 
wheel was in use in England in the time of the first 
Friends, but in many of the country districts, and 
almost everywhere in Scotland, the old " rock and 
reel " were still employed. The " rock " was the hand 
distaff, referred to by Spenser in the " Faery Queen " 
(IV., iii. 48): 

♦Planche, " Dictionnaire de Costume," p. 244. 



132 TEE QUAKER. 

Sad Clotho held the roekCj the whiles the thrid 
By griesly Lachesis was spun with paine. 

Burns also makes Bess, in "Bess and her Spinning- 
Wheel/' say: 

Oh, leeze me on my spinning wheel, 
Oh, leeze me on my rock and reel. 

1730 saw the wheel introduced into Scotland, before 
which " rockings," somewhat corresponding to our old 
quilting parties, were great social events. The cloth 
thus prepared was made up into garments at home, or 
by traveling tailors, for a milliner was only known in 
the large cities, where her business was not only to 
clothe the living, but to " dress dead corpses," and sell 
" dead flannels.'' The peripatetic tailor was paid two or 
three pence a day and his food, or " diet." The travel- 
ing weaver was also an institution, and bought the 
thrifty housewife's yarn, giving or selling in exchange 
new and tempting webs of cloth. The " dead flannels " 
referred to were the wool garments in which, according 
to the law of England, in 1678, enacted in order 
to encourage the wool trade, all corpses were required 
to be buried, heavy fines being imposed for its eva- 
sion. Friends were usually careful to comply with 
these requirements, as instances on record in minutes 
of various meetings abundantly show. 

Many of the first Quaker women were of the peasant 
class, as would be natural with the converts of a race of 
open air preachers. A very short time saw ladies of 
wealth and position, like Lady Springett, taking their 
places in the meetings; but the women of the fields were 
wearers of homespun gowns, and not until the next cen- 
tury were these confined to any special color. Red was 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 133 

very popular in the early haK of the seveiiteenth cen- 
tury: and scarlet was common among the Quaker 
women, as it always has been among the peasants of 
other countries besides England, both for its apparent 
warmth, and for its lasting qualities. Among the 
household accounts of Margaret Fell we find charges 
for scarlet cloth, after the manner of the good house- 
keeper in the Book of Proverbs, who " clothed her 
household in scarlet." When she became the wife of 
George Fox he bought her scarlet cloth for a mantle. 
He writes his wife, about 1678, that with the money she 
had sent him to buy clothes for himself he purchased of 
Eichard Smith a piece of " red cloth for a mantle, be- 
lieving she needed that more than he needed the coat." 
Again, from Worcester prison, he wrote to her that he 
had got a friend to purchase " as much black Spanish 
cloth as would make her a gown," with what she had 
given him, adding, " It cost a great deal of money, but 
I will save." * 

It is to be hoped that she did not wear with her gay 
wrap one of the green aprons that the Friends were 
then regarding as almost the badge of Quakerism, and 
which were so identified with the Quaker women that 
the satires then plentiful in the shape of broadsides and 
pamphlets, all made playful allusions to the green 
aprons. 

This garment happened to be in high favor at the 
time the Quakers arose, and to this accident is due many 
an entry in minutes of Dublin, Aberdeen and London 
meetings, advising their young women with great detail 
as to the style and color of their aprons. The fashion 

* Maria Webb, " The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall," p. 259. 



134 ' THE QUAKER. 

held for many years, and this important article of cos- 
tume was worn by court lady and little scullery maid 
alike. The favorite color with everybody was green 
at first; long afterward we find Swift writing to 
Stella: 

You shall have your aprons; and I'll put all your commissions 
as they come in a paper together; and don't think I'll forget 
(your) orders because they are friend's; I'll be as careful as if 
they were stranger's.* 

The apron is described as of green silk, in a letter of 
April 24th. Later (October 30th, 1711): 

Who'll pay me for this green apron? I will have the moneys 
it cost ten shillings and six pence. I think it plaguey dear for 
a cheap thing, but they said that English silk would cockle, and 
I know not what. 

In the following year Swift has several more com- 
missions from Stella for green aprons from the metropo- 
lis. 

In 1698, Aberdeen Meeting said: 

Let none want aprons at all, and that either green or blue, 
or other grave colors, and not white upon the street or in pub- 
lic at all, nor any spangled or speckled silk or cloth or any silk 
aprons at all. And dear Friends, we being persuaded that none 
of a right spirit will be so stiff or so willful as to prefer their 
own lusts or wills to our tender sense or advice, and labor of 
love in these things.f 

The Women's Quarterly Meeting of Lincolnshire, 
21st of Fourth month, 1721, says: 

We think green aprons are very decent and becoming us as a 
people. 

In 1735, a young woman Friend named May Drum- 
mond, of Edinburgh, who appears to have been a per- 

* Journal to Stella, April 5th, 1711. 

t Aberdeen, *' A Testimony," 5 mo. 28th, 1698. 



A, 8TUDY IN COSTUME. 135 

son of attractive appearance, and much real ability, was 
given an audience witb. Queen Caroline. An original 
letter of that date, from which the following is an ex- 
tract, gives an interesting description of her ministry 
and personal appearance, and emphasizes the green 
apron. She is described as preaching to audiences of 
more than three thousand people. The writer then goes 
on: 

She hath also been to wait on the Queen, and was more than 
an hour in her presence. Att her first coming in the Queen soon 
began and asked her many questions which May was not very 
forward to answer, but after some little pawce she began and had 
a good opportunity for near half an hour (with little interrup- 
tion) To speake to the Queen the Princesses and some Ladys 
of honour (so called) which she and those three friends who 
accompanied her had good reason to think was very much to all 
their satisfaction fFor she spoke in such a tender handsome and 
moving manner that pretty much affected all present so that I 
believe that her visit was not onely acceptable but of very good 
service. The Queen seemed much pleased with her plain dress, and 
green apron, and often said she thought it exceedingly neat and 
becoming. 

The French country women in the reign of Louis 
XI. wore white aprons at work, or in demi-toilette, 
when going to the town to market. The negligee of 1672 
consisted of a black dress with a white apron, and we 
are told by Boursault (^^ Mots a la Mode ") the name of 
this apron: 

L'homme le plus grossier et I'esprit le plus lourd, 
Sait qu'un " Laisse-tout-faire " est un tablier court. 

After the regency the apron, having had a period of • 
disfavor, reappeared in France on young people, and 
was a part of ordinary costume, the overdress being 
abandoned and the apron worn with a jacket (" caraco ") 
and a flounced skirt. The apron descended to the bor- 



136 ^^^ QUAKER, 

der of the gown, had pockets, and was trimmed on the 
edge. It was without ends (" bavettes "), a style con- 
fined to chambermaids.* Miss Hill describes a lady of 
Queen Anne's day thus: 

She wore a black silk petticoat with red and white calico 
border, cherry-colored stays, trimmed with blue and silver, red 
and dove-colored damask gown flowered with large trees, a yellow 
satin apron trimmed with white Persian, muslin head-cloth with 
crowfoot edging, double ruffles with fine edging, a black silk fur- 
belowed scarf and a spotted hood! f 

A bride in the middle of the eighteenth century wore 
a sprigged muslin apron trimmed with lace, over a sil- 
ver muslin " night-gown '' — (an elegant affair, probably 
so called because not worn at night), i^ollekin's wife 
also wore on her wedding day " an elegant lace apron." 
The opening of the nineteenth century saw the Paris- 
ians adoring simplicity, and they took back into favor 
again the discarded white apron, which soon became a 
part of full dress. The rustic straw hat a la shepherdess 
was in favor as also in England, and the gipsy hat tied 
down with a ribbon or a silk handkerchief. Straw was 
worn only with morning dress; the time of year mat- 
tered little. 

During the latter half of the eighteenth century the 
plainest women among the Friends wore aprons of what 
now seem very gay colors — blue, green, etc. The rea- 
son for this is that the white apron was in the height 
of fashion. Watson, the Annalist, says, in writing of a 
period about 1770: 

The plainest women among the Friends (now so averse to fancy 
colours), wore their coloured silk aprons, say of green or blue, 

♦ Quieherat, " Histoire de Costume en France," pp. 328, 520, 574. 
tGeorgiana Hill, " History of English Dress," Vol. II., p. 73. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 137 

etc. This was at a time when the " gay " wore white aprons. In 
time, white aprons were disused (by the latter), and then the 
Friends left off their colored ones and used white. 

A letter of Kichard Shackleton's * dated Ballitore, 
14th Third month, 1776, shows that the green apron, 
even, had its dangers, in its tendency to become a spe- 
cial costume for wear on occasions of public meetings, 
or during the time of religious worship : 

What shall I say about these green aprons? I think we are of 
one mind about them. I believe it is the Master's mind that His 
disciples and followers should be distinguished from the world 
by a singularity of external appearance. I suppose it is also 
His will that a certain peculiarity of habit should distinguish 
them on the solemn occasion of assembling for Divine worship, 
or other religious performances. 

When Sarah, the wife of George Dillwyn, was in 
London, in 1784, she wrote to a member of her family: 
I think the women here far before the men — they dress ex- 
tremely neat and exacts a few of the plainest with black hoods 
and green aprons. Some go to meeting without aprons, but gen- 
erally carry fine muslin or cambric ones in their pockets, to 
put on when they get in the house; if we don't bring one, they 
always offer. 

This also shows us the time of transition from the 
green to the white apron, which did not lose its hold 
among the plainer Quakeresses for nearly a hundred 
years. 

The skirt of the dress was worn with very full 
gathers, soon followed by false hips, and the natural 
successor to this was of course the famous hooped pet- 
ticoat of history and song, which made its appearance 
in 1709. The crinoline, or hoop, was invented by one 
Mrs. Selby, remaining through a longer period than the 

* Quoted by E. Morris Smith, "The Burlington Smiths," p. 157. 



138 



THE QUAKER. 



old farthingale, and was eventually banished by George 
IV.* The following appeared at Bath in 1711: 

The Farthingale Revived: or 
More Work for The Cooper. A Panegyrick on the late, 

BUT most admirable INVENTION OF THE HOOPED PETTICOAT. 

There's scarce a bard that writ in former time 
Had e'er so great, so bright a theme for rhyme. 
The Mantua swain, if living, would confess 
Ours more surprising than his Tyrian dress; 
And Ovid's mistress^ in her loose attire. 
Would cease to charm his eyes, or fan Love's fire. 
Were he in Bath, and had these coats in view, 
He'd write his metamorphosis anew. 
Delia, fresh hooped, would o'er his heart prevail 
To leave Corinna and her tawdry veil. 

The hoop - petticoat was, no 
doubt, thought very fine in the 
country. It had the merit, which 
many fashions did not possess, of 
bestowing importance upon the 
wearer. " Insignificant - looking 
women, to whom before nobody 
had paid any attention, now came 
into notice; and portly women be- 
came positively awful in their ma- 
jesty ! '' t 

The style had a great revival 
1860-1865, both with gay and plain. 

* The stomacher was an earlier garment, introduced in the fifteenth 
century. It was worn by both sexes, and by King Edward IV. 

tA Popular Ballad of 1733. 
What a fine thing hare I seen to-day, 

Oh Mother, a hoop ! 
I must have one, you cannot say nay — 

Oh Mother, a hoop ! 
For husbands are gotten this way, to be sure. 
Men's eyes and Men's hearts they so neatly allure. 

Oh Mother, a hoop, a hoop ; Oh Mother, a hoop ! 

—Percy Soc, Vol. xxrii., p. 220. 




1835. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 139 

There are no doubt to be found in the archives of 
many old Quaker families certain queer and very ugly 
long jackets of a shapeless sort of pattern, known in 
their day and generation as a " short-gown." The 
" short-gown and petticoat " may be met with in litera- 
ture occasionally still, or in the letters of our great- 
grandmothers. It is difficult to understand the early 
enthusiasms over such a thoroughly inartistic garment; 
perhaps feminine ingenuity found an outlet in its deco- 
ration rather than its outline. At all events, the muse 
became thus inspired: 

The Short-Body'd Gown. (1801.) 

Last midsummer day Sally went to the fair, 
For to sell her yarn. Oh, how she did stare! 
Both wives, maids and widows, in every shop round, 
They all were dressed up in a short-body'd gown! 

So home in the evening Miss Sally she hies, 
And tells it her mother with greatest surprise; 
Saying, " Two hanks a day will I spin the week round 
Until I can purchase a short-body'd gown.* 

When Ann Warder landed in !N"ew York, in 1786, 
she wrote to her sister in London: 

The women all wear short gowns, a custom so truly ugly that 
I am mistaken if I ever fall into it. Notwithstanding they say I 
shall soon be glad to do it on account of the heat. 

Thomas Chalkley was sufficiently moved by the hor- 
rors of the hoop to say: 

If Almighty God should make a woman in the same shape her 
hoop makes her, Everybody would say truly it was monstrous. 
So according to this real truth they make themselves monstrous 
by art. 

* Percy Society, Vol. XXVII., p. 264. 



140 



THE QUAKER. 




1787. 



The bodices worn at the time that dress begins to be 
a subject for official notice in meetings were laced, and 
opened in front, exposing the tight stays in gay colors 
worn beneath them. The bodice was cut very low, the 
bosom being covered with a 
" tucker '^ or " modesty piece " 
worn across the top of the bodice 
in front. In 1713 we find the 
Guardian growling at the ladies 
who are beginning to discard the 
latter in order to follow the 
fashion. The year 1800 finds the 
court ladies wearing a becoming 
broad muslin collar of very 
" sheer '' quality, and the Quak- 
eresses adopted the style quite 
generally, as may be seen by comparing the two illus- 
trations of that date. In 1644, when gowns were 
very decollete, Quicherat tells us that the ladies wore, 
en negligee, a white fichu or handkerchief, known as the 
'' whisk," and a linen or fine lace scarf for dress. This 
simplicity was encouraged by Anne of Austria. The 
handkerchief seems to have been the one portion of the 
Quakeress dress that has come down unchanged to mod- 
ern times. 

Thus it was with the " world's people," and as 
Quaker persecution ceased, vanity in dress arose, alas ! 
even among them ; poor Susan Ponder was disowned for 
" conforming to the fashions of this wicked world." 
Aberdeen Meeting has an elaborate description of 
what is and is not to be suffered in men's and women's 
dress. In 1703 the young women came to York Quar- 



The Collar, 

I. Miss Fitzgerald, Lady -in- Waiting to Queen Caroline, 1800. 
After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence 

II. Margaret Morris, Wife of Isaac Collins, Jr., i'jg2-i832. 
Frotn the drawing on stone of A. A^ewsam, after 
the original painting. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 141 

terlj Meeting in long cloaks and the new Paris im- 
portation called the " bonnet.'' They were therefore 
not only ordered to take the advice of their elders be- 
fore coming to ^' these great meetings here in York," 
but one subordinate meeting actually ordered the 
young women of its own meeting to appear before it "in 
those clothes that they intend to have on at York." ^ 
However, neither this, nor the strict oversight of Aber- 
deen, was sufficient in the early years to exclude all 
worldliness; for in 1720 we find all these vanities noted 
in the minutes of the latter as existing among the 
young Quakeresses : " Quilted petticoats, set out in imi- 
tation of hoOps; cloth shoes of a light color, with heels 
white and red; scarlet and purple stockings, and petti- 
coats made short to expose them." In that year, York 
Quarterly Meeting sent the following letter to the 
monthly meetings composing its constituency, which 
was in its turn sent to each particular meeting of 
women. The original from which this is copied was 
directed to " the Women Friends of Rilston Meeting, 
These." t 

Att our Quarterly Meeting held att York, ye 22 & 23 4tli. Mon. 
1720 The Monthly Meets, were called & there was thatt an- 
swered for all, either by Representatives or papers & most gave 
account thatt things were pretty well amongst them notwith- 
standing there are severall things remains amongst us wch are 
very Burthensome to the honest-hearted & have been weightily 
spoken against wch its Desired the Representatives would Deliver 
in the Wisdom of Truth (viz.) the imitating the Fashions of the 
World in their Headclothes some haveing four pinner ends hang- 

* Robert Barclay, " Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Com- 
monwealth," p. 491. 

t Devonshire House Collection, London. 



142 TEE QUAKER. 

ing Down* and handkerchiefs being too thin some haveing them 
hollowed out & putt on farr of their necks also their gown 
sleeves & short capps wth a great Deal to pinn up in the Skirt 
also their Quilted petticoats sett out in imitation of hoops some 
wearing two together also cloth Shoes of light Colors bound wth 
Differing colours and heels White or Red wth White Bands and 
fine Coloured Clogs & strings also Scarlet or Purple Stockings & 
l)etticoats made Short to Expose ym. Friends are also Desired to 
keep out of the fashion of wearing black hats or shaving 
[chip] or straw ones with crowns too little or two large wth 
wch else the Judgment of Truth is gone out agst. 
Signed in behalf of the meeting by 

Maey White, 
Sarah Elam, 
Hannah Aemitstead, 
Tamer Fielding, 
Mary Slater. 

The early Quaker women wore their hair, like that 
of the men, cut low and straight on the forehead, and 
braided or put in a knot on the top of the head. It 
was the era when the great commode was approaching, 
reaching its height in the reign of Queen Anne. This 
perilous structure consisted of " a frame of wire two or 
three stories high, fitted to the head and covered with 
tiffany or rather thin silk now completed into a head- 
dress." f The word " commode " was never used for 
this head dress in America. 

Nor holy church is safe, they say, 
Where decent veil was wont to hide 
The modest sex' religious pride; 
Lest these yet prove too great a load, 



* Pinners appear to have been the pendant ends, streamers, or lap- 
pets, hanging down at the sides of the face, or occasionally behind — ^like 
liripipes," which were longer, and always at the back. These were 
all quite distinct from cap strings. 

t " The Book of Costume. By a Lady of Quality." London, 1846. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 143 

Tis all comprised in the commode; 

Pins tipt with diamond, point and head, 

By which the curls are fastened. 

In radiant firmament set outj 

And over all the hood sur-tout. 

Thus, face that e'rst near head was placed 

Imagine now about the wast. 

For tour on tour, and tire on tire, 

Like steeple Bow, or Grantham spire, 

Or Septizonium, once at Rome, 

(But does not half so well become 

Fair ladies' head) you here behold 

Beauty by tyrant mode controll'd.* 

The articles required in a lady's toilet bore many 
and curious names; they were so incomprehensible to 
the uninitiated, that the following anecdote is most 
amusing: 

A raw lass, being entertained in service, and hearing her mis- 
tress one day call for some of them, she was so far from bring- 
ing any, that she verily took her to be conjuring, and hastily ran 
out of the house, for fear she should raise the devil! f 

The contrast to the Quakeress may be imagined. A 
Prench style in favor at this time also consisted of a 
bandeau of jewels worn over flowing locks in negligent 
fashion on the shoulders, to match the " love-lock " of 
the men. The " love-lock " was introduced by Charles 
I., and consisted of a curl of greater length than the 
rest of the hair, worn on the left side. This soon be- 
came the rage. A corresponding lock with the ladies 



*From " Mundus Mulieribus, or, The Ladies Dressing-Room 
unlocked, and Her Toilet spread," 1670. Anonymous. This is an elab- 
orate description of women's costume. It is given in the publications of 
the Percy Society. Vol. XXVII., p. 190. 

t Quoted by Repton, " Archseologia." Vol. XXVII., p. 56. 



144 ^^^ QUAKER. 

was the " heart-breaker." * The high headdress lasted 
much later than the love-lock. In 1698 we find 
Jonathan Edwards rebuking its appearance in Puritan 
'New England. The Puritan women are often repre- 
sented with " banged " hair. The " high head " had a 
period of decadence, and was revived again in 1Y15, 
and Addison writes soon after : " There is not so 
variable a thing in nature as a Lady's headdress; with- 
in my memory I have known it rise and fall above 
thirty degrees." " I pretend not to draw the quill 
against that immense crop of plumes." The " com- 
mode " killed itself by its own extravagance, the time 
and expense required to put up one's hair becoming so 
great that the hair-dresser could not make his rounds 
to any but the most wealthy of tener than once in three 
weeks or a month, leading one satirical writer of the 
period to remark: 

I consent also to the present style of curling the hair so that 
it may stay a month without combing, tho' I must confess that 
I think 3 weeks or a fortnight might be sufficient time! 

The tremendous " crop," or turban, that all lovers of 

" Cranf ord " will remember, was a favorite of the ladies 

later on. The moment a woman became a Quaker, the 

fact was proclaimed to all the world by her discarding 

all extravagant headdresses. The early Methodists 

were quite as pronounced. An old Norfolk journal 

has the following: 

Several fine ladies who used to wear French silks, French 
hoops, 4 yards wide, t§te de mouton heads, and white satin 
smock petticoats, are now turned Methodists, and followers of 

♦Another "heart-breaker" is described as "False Locks set on 
Wyers to make them stand at a distance," about 1670. They resembled 
butterfly wings over the ears. 



ML 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 145 

Mr. Whitefield, whose doctrine of the new birth has so prevailed 
over them, that they now wear plain stuff gowns, no hoops, 
common night mobs, and old plain bags! 

Stubbes, from wbom we have before quoted, de- 
scribes tbe elaborate coiffure of an elegant dame: 

Then followeth the trimming and tricking of their heades, in 
laying out their haire to the shewe, whiche of force must Be 
curled, fristed, and crisped, laid out (a world to see) on wreathes 
and borders, from one eare to another. And least it should fall 
down, it is vnder propped with forks, wiers, and I cannot tell 
what, like grim sterne monsters, rather than chaste Christian 
matrones. Then on the edges of their boulstered hair (for it 
standeth crested rounde their frontiers, and hanging ouer their 
faces like pendices or uailes, with glasse windowes on euery side) 
there is laide great wreathes of golde and siluer curiously 
wrought, and cunningly applied to the temples of their heades. 
And for feare of lacking anything to set f orthe their pride with- 
all, at their haire, thus wreathed and creasted, are hanged bugles 
(I dare not say babies), ouches, ringes, gold, siluer, glasses, and 
suche other childish gewgaws, and foolish trinkets besides, 
whiche, for they are innumerable, and I vnskilfull in women's 
termes I cannot easily expresse. But God giue them grace to 
giue ouer their vanities, and studie to adorn their heades with 
the incorruptible ornaments of vertue and true godlinesse. 

The ancient London graveyard of the Friends, in 
Lower Redcross Street, Southwark, was removed a few 
years since, not having had any interment made in it 
since 1799. One of the graves was found to be that of 
a young woman who wore on her head a pad quite per- 
fect, such as was customary at the time to keep the hair 
high on the crown; and in the mass of auburn hair, 
long and fine, was a handsome tortoise shell comb.* 
This would indicate the tendency, before alluded to, 
for the Quakers to follow the dictates of fashion, even 
at a safe distance. It was a passing fancy in the early 



Beck and Ball, " The London Friends' Meetings," p. 238. 



^M 



r^m"^' .... 



146 THE QUAKER. 

days to draw up the petticoat through the pocket hole 
and other openings, thereby displaying the gaiety of 
that garment. We may note the case of the maid, 
who being required by John Bolton, on an order from 
George Fox, to sew up the slit in her waist-coat skirt 
behind, answered that she "saw no evil in it; and 
James Claypoole thought it suitable to their principle 
that she should first see the evil in it herself before she 
judged it, and not (saith he) because we say it." * 
Wherein James showed great discrimination. The 
Quakeresses who wore the hair low were really more 
in the French mode, the artistic sense of that nation 
rebelling sooner against the rule of the " commode," 
which seems after the law of contraries to have won its 
name from its inconvenience, much as the " night- 
gown " and " night-cap " were elegant constructions, 
never worn at night ! 

February 15th, 1765, the Duchess of Devonshire 
wrote to her mother: 

I was too tired to write. My sister and I were very smart for 
Carlton House. Our gowns were night-gowns of my invention. 
The body and sleeves black velvet bound with pink, and the 
skirt, apron and handkerchie crape, bound with light pink, and 
large chip hats with feathers and pinks. My sister looked vastly 
pretty. 

Of course all the Germans of the last century were 
devotees of the " schlafrock," which, however, was 
emphatically a lounging garment, a purpose with 
which is instinctively associated all our ideas of the 
old-time German " Herr Professor," who never made 
his toilet until the working hours of the day were 

♦"Tyranny and Hypocrisy Detected." — Answer to a pamphlet, 
" The Spirit of the Hat." Loudon, 1673. 




A STUDY IN COSTUME. 147 

over, and not always then. Macbeth dons a " night- 
gown," and so does Julius Caesar, both being loose 
robes. 

Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., in her well- 
known portrait in the National Gallery, wears her hair 
curled, and is seen in a simple yellow satin gown, with 
broad lace at the low neck, and at the elbow sleeves. 
She wears a pearl necklace and chain. Catherine, 
Duchess of Queensbury (1700-1777), 
the daughter of Lord Clarendon, and 
the patroness of Gay, Prior and 
others, called by Walpole, " Prior's 
Kitty, ever young," wears in her por- 
trait in the I^ational Gallery a cos- 
tume almost Quaker-like in its sim- 
plicity, with a simple coiffure, and a ^ * 
kerchief thrown over the shoulders. Even iTell 
Gwynn (1650-1687) is simple in short sleeves, low 
neck, and short curly hair. 

Thomas Story, whose wide acquaintance took him 
among the " world's people," tells us of an attempt he 
made to convert the Countess of Kildare to Quaker 
dress : 

It being the Time of the Assizes, many of the higher Rank were 
in Town on that Occasion, and divers of our Friends being ac- 
quainted with several of them, one Day came to my Friend 
John Pike's to Dinner, the young Countess of Kildare, and her 
Maiden Sister, and three more of lesser Quality of the Gentry. 
Upon this occasion we had some free and open Conversation to- 
gether, in which this Lady and the rest commended the plain 
Dress of our Women, as the most decent and comely, wishing it 
were in Fashion among them. Upon this I told her " That she 
and the rest of her Quality, standing in Places of Eminence, 
were the fittest to begin it, especially as they saw a Beauty in 



148 THE QUAKER. 

it; and they would be sooner followed than those of lower De- 
gree." To this she replied, " If we should Dress ourselves Plain, 
People would gaze at us, call us Quakers, and make us the Sub- 
ject of their Discourse and Town-talk; and we cannot bear to 
be made so particular." 

I answered, " The Cause is so good, being that of Truth and 
Yirtue, if you will espouse it heartily upon its just Foundation, 
a few of you would dash out of Countenance, with a steady and 
fixed Gravity, Abundance of the other Side, who have no Bottom 
but the Vain Customs of The Times; and you will find a Satis- 
faction in it, an Overbalance to all you can lose, since the Works 
of Virtue and Modesty carry in them an immediate and perpet- 
ual Reward to the Worker." This seemed not unpleasant, being 
said in an open Freedom ; But then, alas ! all was quenched at last 
by this ; they all of them alledged, " That our own young Wo- 
men of any Note, about London and Bristol, went as fine as 
they with the finest of Silk and Laced Shoes; and when they 
went to Bath, made as great a Show as any." Not knowing 
but some Particulars might give too much occasion for this Alle- 
gation, it was a little quenching; but, with some Presence of 
Mind, I replied, " I have been lately at London and Bristol, and 
also at the Bath, and have not observed any such; but at all 
these three Places generally indifferent plain, and many of them, 
even of the younger sort, very well on that Account; But such 
among us who take such Liberties, go beside their Profession, and 
are no Examples of Virtue, but a dishonour and Reproach to our 
Profession, and a daily and perpetual Exercise to us; and I hope 
you will not look at the Worst, since, among us everywhere, you 
may find better and more general Examples of Virtue and Plain- 
ness." This they did not deny; and so that Part ended.* 

London Quarterly Meeting, in 1717, issued a paper 
in which the women are exhorted not to deck them- 
selves with ^' gaudy and costly apparel," nor to wear 
^^ gold chains, lockets, necklaces and gold watches ex- 
posed to open view." The " immodest fashion of 
hooped petticoats " is condemned ; the wearing of 
mourning, and worldly conversation. " Likewise there 
is a declension crept in among us of unbecoming ges- 

» Thomas Story, Journal. Folio edition, p. 533. 1716. 



A STUDY IN C08TU2IE. 149 

tures in cringing and bowing of the body by way of 
salutation, whicb ongbt not to be taught or coun- 
tenanced in our schools or families." The document 
then asks: 

How shall any persons reputed Quakers wearing extravagant 
wigs, open breasts, their hats and clothes after a beauish fash- 
ion, gold chains with lockets and gold watches openly exposed, 
like the lofty dames, or hooped petticoats, like the wanton wo- 
men, be distinguished from the loose, proud people of the world?* 

Stubbes had declared f that the perfumes so prevalent 
at this time were " engines of pride, allurements to 
sinne, and provocations to vice ! " If cleanliness is 
next to godliness, old Stubbes may indeed have been 
right; for the heavy odors in use covered up a multi- 
tude of sins. The prevalent use of snuff made the silk 
handkerchief a necessity. A few dainty folk used 
those of cambric. An old advertisement calls atten- 
tion to " handkerchiefs that will wash in a weak lather 
of soap without prejudice.'^ :j: The custom of ladies 
smoking was a fad with the " smart set " of that day as 
well as our own. They still painted, a custom which 
Evelyn (11th of May, 1654) had noticed beginning: 
" I now observed how the women began to paint them- 
selves, formerly a most ignominious thing.'' 

As for patching, it was universal, and evidently only 
another " snare " for the feminine Quaker mind ! We 
learn from Pepys (May 1, 16 6 Y) of the patching of one 
maid: 

That which I did see and wonder at with reason^ was to find 
Pegg Pen in a new coach, with only her husband's pretty sister 

*Beck and BaJl, " London Friends' Meetings," p. 77. 

t "Anatomie of Abuses," p. 200. 

J Ashton, " Social Life in Reign of Queen Anne," p. 118. 



150 TEE QUAKER. 

[Margaret Lowther] with her, both patched and very fine, and 
in much the finef?t coach in the park. . . . When we had spent 
half an hour in the park, we went out again, . . . and so home, 
where we find the two young ladies come home and their patches 
off. I suppose Sir W. Pen do not allow of them in his sight! 

The " stay-maker " was the companion of the wig- 
maker; there are several Quakers whose names appear 
in the old London records as " stay-makers/' or 
" bodice-makers." Thej advertised " both wooden 
and whalebone corset-busks." When the wig-makers 
ceased to be found among the Quakers, the bodice- 
makers pursued their way alone, that trade not being 
under condemnation, which only served to ruin the 
health, and was less conspicuous than the wig. '' Fash- 
ion babies " have been alluded to ; these merit more 
than a passing notice. They were models of costume, 
originally sent by Paris modistes to London and other 
cities of large population, displaying the very latest 
ideas in dress. The fashion plate was then far in the 
future, and even the Quakers employed this method 
of communicating their ideas as to the ^^ proper thing " 
in drab to their country friends, or, as in the case of 
the doll model that was given to Stephen Grellet, to 
other communities of their own sect. 

Several of these dolls have been kindly loaned me 
for examination. Just as Mademoiselle Martin, a 
famous modiste of the time of Marie Antoinette, was in 
the habit of sending doll models of the latest style, 
called " babies," to the most distant parts of Europe, 
so these quaint little Quaker dolls served to show the 
distant friend what was worn at the metropolis. There 
were, as we have seen, many changes of style in Quaker 
dress. The difference between them and the " world's 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 151 

people " lay in the magnitude and profundity of the 
question, relatively speaking; for quite as much 
thought and expenditure of time and money went 
into the alteration of a pleat in the Quaker bonnet, or 
a flap on the Quaker coat, as ever entered into the con- 
struction of a Paris " confection." Of these models — 
for it is a mistake to call them dolls, since they were 
anything but toys — one, for instance, is in the exact 
dress of Kebecca Jones, a well-known Philadelphia 
Friend, who lived from 1739 to 1818. She wears the -^^ 
bonnet with soft crown and a very large cape spreading 
in three points down the back and to the tip of each 
shoulder. The crown of another bonnet made about 
1790, still extant, has a double box-pleat at top in cen- 
ter and four pleats dovsTi the side, clearly showing the 
coming stiff pleats in the " coal-scuttle " of later de- 
velopment. " Patty Rutter " is also a doll with a seri- 
ous purpose, dressed in 1782 by Miss Sarah Rutter, of 
Philadelphia, and sent to Mrs. Samuel Adams, of 
Quincy, Massachusetts. It was presented to the 
Museum in Independence Hall in 1845. The doll is 
in Quaker dress, consisting of white silk bonnet and 
shawl, and drab silk gown. At her side hangs a chate- 
laine, vdth watch and pencil. The doll and her cos- 
tume are still intact. The most interesting of all these 
models, however, is that of the Grellet family. Ste- 
phen Grellet was a famous French Quaker, who, as 
Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier, escaped from Limoges, 
his patrician father's home, at the time of the French 
revolution, and with a brother took refuge in America. 
Meeting with the Quakers, he became convinced of 
their principles, and at the time of his death was one 



152 ^^^ QUAKER, 

of their most famous preachers. He was in England 
in the year 1816, intending to visit the French at Con- 
genies in France, where was a little community re- 
markably in sympathy with the Friends, although hav- 
ing had no communication with them originally. Eng- 
lish Friends desired to aid his efforts to build up their 
small meeting. The Quaker women of London, there- 
fore, made and dressed for them a model in wax of a 
properly gowned woman Friend. Some untoward 
event recalled the preacher to his American home be- 
fore he succeeded in the accomplishment of his original 
purpose. Upon his arrival, the doll was discovered, 
to his astonishment, in one of his trunks. When 
he wrote to ask how to dispose of the doll, the 
reply was: "Give her to thy little daughter.'' That 
" little daughter," living in New Jersey until July, 
/ 1901, to the great age of ninety years, was herself the 
authority for this story of " Rachel," as the beautiful 
doll has always been called. The fine rolled hem of the 
cap-border bears witness to the exquisite needle-work 
of the last century. 

An increasing manifestation of the love of dress was 
marked throughout the colonies. The Friends from 
England noted this with aU anxious eye, and in nearly 
all the meetings in America may be found records deal- 
ing with that tendency. Finally, Friends of Philadel- 
phia Yearly Meeting, then held at Burlington, New 
Jersey, issued the following note of warning: 

From Women ffriends at the Yearly Meeting held at Bur- 
lington, The 21st. of the 7th. Month, 1726. 

To Women ffriends at the Several Quarterly & Monthly Meet- 
ings belonging to the same, — Greeting. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 153 

Dear and Well-beloved Sisters: 

A Weighty Concern coming upon many 
ffaithful ffriends at this Meeting, In Relation to divers undue 
Liberties that are too frequently taken by some yt. walek among 
us, & are Accounted of us. We are Willing in the pure Love of 
Truth wch. hath Mercifully Visited our Souls, Tenderly to Cau- 
tion & Advise ffriends against those things which we think In- 
consistent with our Ancient Christian Testimony of Plainness in 
Apparel &c.. Some of which we think it proper to Particularize. 

As first, That Immodest ffashion of hooped Pettycoats, or ye. 
imitation of them, Either by Something put into their Petty- 
coats to make ym sett full, or Wearing more than is Necessary, 
or any other Imitation Whatsoever, Which we take to be but a 
Branch Springing from ye. same Corrupt root of Pride. 

And also That None of Sd ffriends Accustom themselves to 
wear their Gowns with Superfluous ffolds behind, but plain and 
Decent. Nor to go without Aprons, Nor to wear Superfluous 
Gathers or Pleats in their Capps or Pinners, Nor to wear their 
heads drest high behind. Neither to Cut or Lay their hair on ye 
fforehead or Temples. 

And that ffriends are careful to avoid Wearing of Stript' Shoos, 
or Red or White heel'd Shoos, or Clogs, or Shoos trimmed wh. 
Gawdy Colours. t 

Likewise, That all ffriends be Careful to Avoid Superfluity of 
Furniture in their Houses, And as much as may be "to refrain 
Using Gawdy floured or Stript Callicos and Stuffs. ,' 

And also that no ffriends Use ye Irreverent practice of tak- 
ing Snuff, or handing Snuff boxes one ;feo Another in Meetings. 

Also That ffriends Avoid ye Unne(|psary use of :flfans* in Meet- 
ings, least it Divert ye mind Irqj^^^e more Inward & Spiritual 
Exercise wch. all ought to be Coa^rn'd in. " ^ ■ 

And also That ffriends do ni^t^ Accustom themselves to go in 
bare Breasts or bare Necks. J" i-' 

There is Likewise a Tender Concern upon cir minds to recom- 
mend unto all ffriends, the Constant use of" ye plain Language 
It being a Branch of our Ancient Christian; Testimony, for wch. 
many of or Worthy Elders underwent deep Sufferings in their 
Day As they Likewise "Did because they could not give ye Com- 

***Ffans" first, came to New England[ in 1714, so were not new in 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey at this time;, although they were not in 
common use before 1750, and the Friends cohsidered them very gay. 






154 THE QUAKER. 

mon Salutation by Bowing and Cringing of ye Body wch. we 
Earnestly desire ffriends may be Careful to Avoid. 

And we farther Tenderly Advise and Exhort That all flfriends 
be careful to Maintain Love and Unity and to Watch against 
Whispering and Evil Surmisings One against Another, and to keep 
in Humility, That Nothing be done through Strife or Vainglory, 
and yt. those who are Concerned to take an oversight over the 
filock. Do it not as Lords over God's heritage, but as Servants 
to ye Churches. 

Dear Sisters, These Things we Solidly recommend to yor Care 
and Notice In a Degree of yt. Divine Love wch hath previously 
Manifested Itself for ye Redemption of a [MS. illegible] ye Vain 
Conversations, Customs, & Fashions yt. are in ye World, That 
we might be unto ye Lord, A Chosen Generation, A Royal Priest- 
hood, An Holy Nation, A Peculair People, Shewing forth ye 
Praises of him who hath called us out of Darkness into his Mar- 
vellous Light, that We may all walck as Children of the Light 
& of ye Day, Is ye Earnest Desire of our Souls. 

We Conclude wth. ye Salutation of Unfeigned Love, yor ffrienda 
and Sisters. 

Signed on behalf & by ordr. of ye sd. Meeting By 

Hannah Hill. 

The " surprise '' fan was made with an unexpected 
joint, like the early parasols. Ann Warder notes the 
constant and needless use of fans, and with some com- 
placency, remarks upon her own forbearance in the mat- 
ter, " lest it should prove a disturbance to others.'^ 
Only two days after her arrival from England, under 
date 9th of June, 1786, she wrote, " Such a general use 
of fans my eyes never beheld. You scarcely see a 
woman without one. And in winter, I am told, they 
visit with them as a plaything.'' She noticed a 
child with a dirty face playing in the street. The 
mother ^^ did not wash its face in the daytime for fear 
of spoiling its complexion ! " " Their mode of dress- 
ing children in Philadelphia," she regards, as " not so 
becoming as with us. I have scarcely seen a White 



Going, to Meeting in i^SO. ' ' 

From an original photograpji. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 155 

Frock since my arrival. ISTot a woman has visited me 
but was elegant enough for any Bride, indeed we could 
almost persuade ourselves that was the case from so 
much saluting." 

ITo costume was more important for the Quaker 
woman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
than that designed for use on horseback. This was 
even more the case in the colonies than in England, 
where, in London, at least, the sedan chair and the 
coach were cosmopolitan luxuries enjoyed very early. 
Country Friends, however, had to ride everywhere, and 
a woman, and especially a woman minister, if she trav- 
eled at all, must of necessity be a good horsewoman. 
The riding hood, with cape or long cloak attached — 
called a " Mthesdale " or " Capuchin," respectively — 
was worn over the ordinary dress, the skirt of which 
was often protected by a " safeguard." Mrs. Earle 
defines a " safeguard " as an " outside petticoat of 
heavy linen or woollen stuff, worn over other skirts to 
protect them from mud in riding on horseback." Ann 
Warder wrote of the Quaker women of Pennsylvania, 
in 1786, " They are very shiftable. They ride by them- 
selves with a safeguard, which, when done with, is tied 
to the saddle, and the horse hooked to a rail, standing 
all meeting time as still as their riders sit." The 
" safeguard " seems to have disappeared in ISTew Eng- 
land after 1750, indicating the introduction of the rid- 
ing habit, which was appearing in England, and excit- 
ing the ridicule of the cynical Dean of St. Patrick's,* 

* "I did not like [Miss Forester], although she be a toast and was 
dressed like a man." Swift, Journal to Stella, August 11th, 1711, The 
riding habit, which was the dress Swift alluded to, had just come in. 
Pepys, 1666, had also described the ladies in the galleries at Whitehall, 
in doublets, with periwigs and hats. 



156 



THE QUAKER. 



and others. The flat beaver hat, with very broad brim, 
and crown not two inches in height, was much 
worn for riding, and its contemporary cloak is of 
heavy grey stufl, the originals from which the illus- 
tration was taken being known to be over one hundred 
and fifty years old. 

An accompaniment of the riding costume was the 
riding-mask, vizor, or, as usually written, " vizzard.'' 




It was of this that Fox wrote, "Away with your un- 
necessary buttons," " your skimming-dish hats," 
^' vizzardsy^ etc. He is probably referring also to the 
" vizzard " which was used as well in walking, and at 
one time worn hanging by a ribbon or cord at the side. 
In 1645, we are told, the Puritans of Plymouth, Mass., 
for " some unaccountable reason," forbade them to 
their people. We should think that the reason of 
extravagance might have proved as sufficient with 
them as with the Quakers. For old Stubbes, not long 
before this, had been making his ultra-Puritanical 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 157 

strictures on almost all varieties of English dress, and 
he thus scores the visors: 

When they vse to ride abroad, they haue visors made of veluet 
(or in my iudgment they may rather be called inuisories) where- 
with they couer all their faces, hauing holes made in them 
agaynst their eies, whereout they looke. So that if a man 
that knew not their guise before, shoulde chaunce to meete one 
of theme, he would thinke he mette a monster or a deuill; for 
face he can see none, but two broad holes against their eyes 
with glasses in them. Thus they prophane the name of God, and 
Hue in all kinde of voluptuousnesse and pleasure, worse than 
euer did the heathen.* 

The mystery of their attachment while riding, with 
possibly both hands occupied with a restless horse, is 
solved by learning that the article had a silver mouth- 
piece, by which the teeth of the wearer held it in place, 
leaving her free to grasp the reins or the pillion, as 
the case might be. There was no protection from rain 
or sleet in those days before the umbrella, and a rainy- 
day costume was imperative. All sorts of devices were 
permissible. 

Good housewives all the winter's rage despise, 
Defended by the riding-hood's disguise. 

Why should I teach the maid, when torrents pour 
Her head to shelter from the sudden shower? 
Nature will best her ready hand inform 
With her spread petticoat to fence the storm. 

Gay. "Trivia." 

Reference has elsewhere been made to the gay color- 
ing of the clothing among the early Puritans in J^ew 
England, but by the middle of the eighteenth century 
their garb was generally as " sad " in color as their or- 
dinary life was in tone. A pleasant contrast to them 

* Philip Stubbes, " Anatomie of Abuses," p. 76. Ed. 1586. 



158 THE QUAKER. 

are the homely Dutch Vrouws of ^N^ew Amsterdam, 
who wore gowns of the gayest tints, as they went 
clinking along the streets in their heavy footgear. The 
Quaker women of the colonies seem to have more in 
common with the latter than with the Puritans, despite 
their sobriety of living. Scarlet cloaks found their 
way to America very early in the history of Penn's 
colony, and there seems to have been much latitude in 
dress. The wealthy women Priends in Pennsylvania 
in the days of the Founder, dressed far more expen- 
sively and elaborately than they ever did at a later 
date ; they flourished about in " white satin petticoats, 
worked in flowers, pearl satin gowns, or peach-colored 
satin cloaks; their white necks were covered with deli- 
cate lawn, and they wore gold chains and seals, en- 
graven with their arms." Miss Repplier tells us that 
Sarah Logan Morris, the wife of Isaac N'orris, of Fair- 
hill, wore a gown of deep blue. Mary, the daughter 
of Thomas Lloyd, who married Isaac ITorris, the elder, 
wore blue and crimson; while her granddaughter, 
Mary Dickinson, wore deep red. All these women 
were Quakers of the best families in the country. It 
is worth while to note that the daughter of Mary Dick- 
inson, Maria Logan, was far more plain than her 
mother or grandmother had been, showing a growing 
tendency of the Quakers to emphasize plainness, and an 
increasing attention to uniformity of garb among their 
members. The presence of the Founder seems to have 
had much the effect of the residence of the sovereign 
in a small estate. His courtly dress and manners had 
their inevitable effect upon the Quakers, whether in 
London or Philadelphia; and had it been possible to 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 159 

prolong his life through the next century, his people 
might have been spared much of their narrow policy, 
political as well as social, by the aid of his sane and ex- 
perienced advice. There is universal testimony to 
the beauty and picturesqueness of the young Quaker- 
esses of the aristocracy in the early days. The por- 
trait of " The Fair Quaker," Hannah Middleton Gur- 
ney, whose costume was identical with that of Gulielma 
Springett, William Penn's first wife,* is that of a sur- 
passingly handsome woman; and the Frenchman, Bris- 
sot, wrote of the Philadelphia Quakeresses many years 
after at the time of the Kevolution, when dress was 
plainer among them: 

These youthful creatures whom nature has so well endowed, 
whose charm has so little need of art, wear the finest muslins and 
silks. Oriental luxury would not disdain the exquisite textures 
in which they take delight. 

The Frenchman did not fail to admire anything so 
artistic, and the Due de la Rochefoucauld is the next 
to express himself, adding, " Ribbons please the young 
Quakeresses, and are the greatest enemies of the 
sect." t 

Many agreed with the writer who not long before 

liad said: 

Behold the smart Quaker that looks in the glass. 

Her hair doth all other companions surpass; 

You deform your sweet faces, I vow and declare; 

You should cut off your lappets and burn your false hair.$ 

♦See explanatory note regarding this portrait in Maria Webb's 
*' Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth Century," to which the 
engraving of " Guli " Penn forms the frontispiece. It is quite distinct 
from the engraving with the same title, here reproduced. 

t Agnes Eepplier, "Philadelphia; The Place and the People," 
p. 286. 

t " The Mountain of Hair," 1760. Percy See. Vol. XXVII., p. 245. 



160 THE QUAKER. 

Our great-grandmotliers, if we may judge by the 
clotlies that have come down to us, were, as a rule, 
smaller women than the average in these days of their 
tall and athletic descendants. 

The private Diary of Ann, wife of James Whitall, 
of Eed Bank, !N"ew Jersey, under date, 21st 12 mo., 
1760, has the following: 

Oh, will there ever be a Nehemiah raised at our meeting to 
mourn and grieve ! Oh, the fashions and running into them ! The 
young men wearing their hats set up behind, and next it's likely- 
will be a ribbon to tie their hair up behind; the girls in Penn- 
sylvania have their necks set off with a black ribbon; a sor- 
rowful sight indeed! . . . There is this day Josiah Albertson*a 
son, all the son he has, and his hat is close up behind! 

A little later, 3 mo. 18, 1762: 

Oh, T think, could my eyes run down with tears always for 
the abomination of the times. So much excess of tobacco; and 
tea is as bad, so much of it, and they will pretend they can't 
do without it ; and there is the calico — Oh, the calico ! . . . I think 
tobacco and tea and calico may all be set down with the negroes, 
one as bad as the other.* 

The mournful strain in which the above is written 
was somewhat characteristic of the more sober plain 
folk among the Quakers of the last century. Many 
old letters exist in which are recorded prolonged wails 
and groanings in spirit over bonnet strings, hat-bands, 
shoe-buckles, and such momentous matters, all treated 
with the utmost gravity. Great interests were at 
stake in both England and America at these periods; 
but the Friends withdrew themselves from contact 
with outside interests of all sorts; and this, in addition 
to the greater isolation of each little community than 
in modern times, due to the difficulty of travel, tended 

» Hannah Whitall Smith, " The Life of John M. WhitaJl." 



A 8TUDT IN COSTUME. 161 

to cultivate a feeling of their own importance in the 
world, and to the exaggeration of details in their little 
neighborhoods ; so that the appearance of a man on the 
street with a new cock to his hat, or of a young woman 
with a black ribbon at her neck, shook the community 
to its foundations! It is amusing to read, in the edi- 
tor's comments on the above diary, that at the very 
time the writer was so bewailing the worldliness of a 
black ribbon, she herself sat under the gallery of 
Woodbury meeting, arrayed in a straw bonnet lined 
with pink silk !' After all, there is no standard of per- 
fect plainness. The matter is entirely a relative one. 

In the month of May, 17T1, Isaac Collins, of Bur- 
lington, 'N. J., married Kachel Budd, of Philadelphia, 
at the " Bank Meeting," in that city. His wedding 
dress was a coat of peach blossom cloth, the great skirts 
of which had outside pockets; it was lined throughout 
with quilted white silk. The large waistcoat was of 
the same material. He wore small clothes, knee buck- 
les, silk stockings and pumps — a cocked hat sur- 
mounted the whole. The bride, who is described as 
" lovely in mind and person," wore a light blue bro- 
cade, shoes of the same material, vdth very high heels 
— not larger at the sole than a gold dollar — and sharp- 
ly pointed at the toes. Her dress was in the fashion 
of the day, consisting of a robe, long in the back, with 
a large hoop. A short blue bodice with a white satin 
stomacher embroidered in colors, had a blue cord laced 
from side to side. On her head she wore a black mode 
hood lined with white silk, the large cape extending 
over the shoulders. Upon her return from meeting 
after the ceremony, she put on a thin white apron of 



162 TEE QUAKER. 

ample dimensions, tied in front witli a large blue bow. 
The gaiety of this display positively takes our breath, 
particularly when we reflect that the bride had once 
belonged in John Woolman's own meeting. And yet, 
it only serves to show that the entire question of dress 
is relative, custom and precedent usually dictating 
what is unlawful, the whole matter being arbitrary 
to a startling degree. Our heart goes out to this beau- 
tifully picturesque Quaker couple, of whom the groom 
was already making a name for himseK in the printer's 
art, and who shortly after issued the colonial currency 
of E^ew Jersey in connection with the greater Frank- 
lin.* Apparently, the plain Friends were so accus- 
tomed to brilliant dressing in the neighborhood of 
Philadelphia, a very gay town in that day, that they 
did not take alarm at the colors introduced on this oc- 
casion, despite all they had said and written on the 
subject of dress in their official character. 

That the younger Quakers followed the changes of 
Dame Fashion has been, we think, fully demon- 
strated. The wedding of Isaac Collins and Rachel 
Budd carried out the styles then prevailing. The ideal 
painting by Percy Bigland, "A Quaker Wedding," his- 
torically correct in its representation, shows a dress 
plainly influenced by the times, as the ^' empire '' 
gown of the bride indicates. The " Two Friends,'' 
belongs to the years between 1835 and 1840, and since 
that time the present generation can refer to the cos- 
tumes of their own parents. Older people have worn 
the modern plain bonnet and shawl for fifty or sixty 

* I am indebted to the great-granddaughter of this picturesque couple 
for the description, which is authentic. 



«l 



^ Quaker Wedding, 1820. 

After the original pauUin^ by Percy Bigland in possession of 
Isaac //. Clothier, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 163 

years. Before that time, the same bonnet had a soft 
crown; and a long hooded cloak — cloth in winter and 
silk in summer — ^was substituted for the shawl. The 
Quakers have always shown their exquisite taste in 
choice of materials, and have instinctively realized 
that nothing but the best stuffs would lend themselves 
with dignity to the severe simplicity of their garb. 
This could have been better realized some thirty years 
ago, when each of our great cities supported at least 
one large shop where Quaker goods exclusively were 
sold. The fact that the Quakers can now be served at 
any shop speaks volumes for either their deterioration 
or their progress — depending upon one's point of view. 

By the time of the Kevolution, Philadelphia far sur- 
passed all other towns in the colonies with its extrava- 
gance and luxury of living, winding up with the " Mes- 
chianza " — that pageant whose tradition is still re- 
hearsed in the ears of modern townsfolk, sounding 
more like a page from the fairy tales of the Middle 
Ages than actual happenings in the city of Penn. A 
Hessian officer, writing of the ladies of America at that 
time, says,* 

They are great admirers of cleanliness, and keep themselves well 
shod. They friz their hair every day and gather it up on the 
back of the head into a chignon, at the same time puffing it up 
in front. They generally walk about with their heads uncovered, 
and sometimes but not often wear some light fabric on their 
hair. Now and then some country nymph has her hair flowing 
down behind her, braided with a piece of ribbon. Should they 
go out, even though they be living in a hut, they throw a silk 
wrap about themselves and put on gloves. They also put on 
some well made and stylish little sunbonnet, from which their 
roguish eyes have a most fascinating way of meeting yours. In 

* Alice Morse Earle, " Costume of Colonial Times," p. 31. 



164 



THE QUAKER. 



the English colonies the beauties have fallen in love with red 
silk or woolen wraps. 

A letter of Miss Rebecca Franks, a Philadelphia 
belle visiting in "New York in 1Y78, speaks thus of so- 
ciety there in that vear : 

You can have no idea of the 
life of continued amusement I live 
in. I can scarce have a moment 
to myself. I have stole this while 
everybody is retired to dress for 
dinner. I am but just come from 
under Mr. J. Black's hands, and 
most elegantly dressed am I for 
a ball this evening at Smith's, 
where we have one every Thurs- 
day. . . . The dress is more redicu- 
lous and pretty than anything 1 
ever saw — a great quantity of 
different coloured feathers on the 
head at a time beside a thousand 
other things. The hair dressed 
very high, in the shape Miss Vin- 
ing's was the night we returned 
from Smith's — the Hat we found 
in your Mother's closet wou'd be 
of a proper size. I have an after- 
noon cap with one wing, tho' I assure you I go less in the fashion 
than most of the ladies — no being dressed without a hoop. 

The Journal of Elizabeth Drinker, of Philadelphia, 
under date " December 15, 1777,'' says: 

Peggy York called this morning. . . . She had on the highest 
and most rediculous headdress that I have yet seen. 




1776. 

(After Martin.) 



A little later, July 4, 1778: 

A very high headdress was exhibited thro' ye streets this af- 
ternoon, on a very dirty woman, with a mob after her with 
drums etc. by way of ridiculing that very foolish fashion. 



The Two Friends. 

After the engraving by Bouvier, London. About 1833. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 165 

In 1786 Ann Warder's Journal describes similar ex- 
travagance : 

"Came to call" — a fine girl called the perfection of America 
but her being drest fantastical to the greatest degree and painted 
like a doll destroyed every pretension to Beauty, in my mind. 

Such extravagance recalls the old poem: 

The Ladies' Head-Dkess. 

Give Chloe a bushel of horse-hair and wool. 

Of paste and pomatum a pound, 
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull. 

And gauze to encompass it round. 

Of all the bright colours the rainbow displays 

Be those ribbons which hang on her head, 
Be her flounces adapted to make the folks gaze, 

And about the whole work be they spread. 

Let her flaps fly behind, for a yard at the least; 

Let her curls meet just under her chin; 
Let these curls be supported, to keep up the jest, 

With an hundred^ instead of one, pin. 

Let her gown be tuck'd up to the hip on each side; 

Shoes too high for to walk, or to jump; 
And, to deck the sweet creature complete for a bride, 

Let the cork-cutter make her a rump. 

Thus finish'd in taste, while on Chloe you gaze. 

You may take the dear charmer for life; 
But never undress her — for, out of her stays 

You'll find you have lost half your wife.* 

An American in London at the end of the last cen- 
tury, whether Quaker or not, was bound to have some 
surprises in contrasting the styles at home and abroad. 

♦ From Publications of Percy Society, Vol. XXVII., p. 259. Printed 
first in " London Magazine " for 1777, and very popular. 



166 THE QUAKER. 

In 1781, Lady Cathcart, an American by birth, wrote 
of London fashions: 

They wear for morning a white poloneze or a dress they call 
a Levete [Levite] which is a kind of gown and Petieote with long 
sleeves made with scarcely any pique in the back, and worn with 
a sash tyed on the left side. They make these in winter of 
white dimity, and in summer of muslin with chintz borders. 

We are told that the " robe-levite '' imitated this 
garment, and that the " monkey-tailed levite '^ had a 
curiously twisted train, and was a French fashion.* 
Our " Fair Quaker " of this date wears what is no 
doubt a " Levite." Did its name help to make it seem 
less worldly? 

George and Sarah (Hill) Dillwyn, very plain 
Friends from Philadelphia, went over to visit their 
English relatives in London soon after the peace was 
signed. Her letters to her family at home in ISTew Jer- 
sey are the observations of an alert, lively woman, to 
whose philosophical mind the gay capital served as an 
amusement, but not in the least a temptation. Her 
opportunities for observation were of the best. She 
writes to her sister, M. Morris, dating her letter. 
"London, 4 12th. 1785": 

I find it in vain to keep pace here with the nice dames, so don't 
care a fig about it; let us be dressed as we will, I find the best 
of them take a great deal more notice of us than either of us 
desires.f 

They mention their reticules — spelt preferably by 
all, apparently, "ridicule;" these side pockets must 
match the gown, with tassel and strings. 

" When writing of women," said Diderot, " we 
should dip our pen in the rainbow, and throw over each 

*Mrs. Earle, " Costume of Colonial Times," p. 152. 

t " Letters of the Hill Family," edited by J. J. Smith, p. 256. 



-■f:;^**.*'*-^*. !;//»<• i ^-.. ir^ifc;i»'-^»--»S?»*'. 



The Fair Quaker. 

London^ 1^82. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 167 

line the powder of the butterfly's wing, instead of 
sand ! " ISTo such ethereal notion is left of woman in 
these athletic days of the golfing girl, but it is not so 
long since exercise was a disgrace, and to seem to live 
on anything more substantial than air, a crime against 
good taste. Gowns, of course, partook of the general 
aesthetic tendency, and the period of classicism in dress 
left its imprint on the garb even of the Quaker ladies 
of the early part of this century. Fashions as a rule 
change gradually, but at the French Revolution they 
made a sudden revolt, and down came the " high 
heads " and the " poufs au sentiment,'' the latter a 
pleasing structure some four feet high, representing 
at the wearer's whim, gardens and trees, and ships un- 
der full sail in billowy seas of gauze, or models of their 
nursery and babies and all their pet animals. The re- 
action went to the other extreme, when Paris sought 
to reproduce Greek simplicity; the " statuesque " 
effects that resulted might have caused even a Greek 
statue to blush. The desired effect was attained by dis- 
carding to the limit of decency, and even beyond it, 
all possible undergarments, ^one too many, accord- 
ing to our hygienic ideas in this day, had ever been 
worn. But a scanty cambric petticoat in the last days 
of the last century was quite the heaviest undergar- 
ment possible. The clinging draperies that resulted 
displayed a curious commingling of classical names; 
and one fine lady is quoted as wearing at the same time 
in 1809, " a robe a la Didon, a Carthage Cymar, and a 
Spartan Diadem." Tito, Daphne, Ariadne, Calypso, 
Diana and the whole Greek array were levied upon to 
distinguish different styles; and even Medusa lent her 



J 



158 THE QUAKER. 

name to a coiffure ! The only thing to be said in favor 
of this riot of classicism was that it put an abrupt end 
to cocked hats, wigs, pigtails and hair powder. Hoops 
became past horrors, as did expanded petticoats; but 
while the less enthusiastic English refused to be quite 
so unrestrained in dress as their neighbors across the 
channel, they followed sufficiently far to attain a high 
disdain for any underclothing that interfered with 
statuesque effects, and perilous indeed must have been 
the results in the unfriendly English climate. Gauze 
and silks and tiffanys and taffetas, India muslins and 
delicate gossamers were considered heavy enough for 
winter wear by our English grandmothers, who, poor 
things, killed themselves off before their time and trans- 
mitted many an ill to their descendants as a tribute to 
Dame Fashion. Shoes came from France, and were of 
finest kid, for by some unaccountable mental bias it 
was no more possible then than it is now for the Eng- 
lish to make a graceful shoe. Rouge was described as 
an " animating appendage " to the toilette, and cold 
water was regarded as an enemy to good looks — " the 
natural enemy to a smooth skin ! " Prince Jerome 
Bonaparte married Miss Elizabeth Patterson on Christ- 
mas eve, 1803. A gentleman who was present wrote: 

All the clothes worn by the bride might have been put in my 
pocket. Her dress was of muslin richly embroidered, of extreme- 
ly fine texture. Beneath her dress she wore but a single gar- 
ment.* 

The classical craze wore itseK out, as crazes will. 
The only reason that it has here been referred to is be- 
cause the scanty supply of underclothing which it per- 

* Mrs. Hunt, " Our Grandmothers' Gowns," p. 15. 



A 8TUDY IN COSTUME. 169 

mitted caused our Quaker grandmothers many an ill, 
in the tradition left them that true refinement de- 
manded an attire too airy to be compatible with the 
sharp changes of an English or American winter. Ko- 
body wore woollen garments in the early nineteenth 
century, and for a long time cloth was regarded as very 
unfeminine even for an outside wrap. Linen was uni- 
versal, and silk stockings with the thinnest lasting, or 
" prunella " shoes and slippers, with soles of paper-like 
thickness, were the usual foot-covering in houses full 
of draughts caused by open fires. Carpet or " list " 
shoes were donned by old ladies for snow and ice, and 
clogs and pattens were worn by the belles of the day. 
To be sure, heavy fur pelisses were worn in bitter 
weather, but were at once thrown aside on entering the 
house. 

"We find that calicoes with gay and fanciful designs 
became very fashionable after the Revolution in Amer- 
ica; and it is no doubt to this mode that the Diary of 
Ann Whitall refers. An old newspaper says, " Since 
the peace, calico has become the general fashion of our 
country women, and is worn by females of all condi- 
tions at all seasons of the year, both in town and coun- 
try." The French calicoes were delicate in texture and 
color, and were said to have been so popular that they 
were even worn in the freezing cold churches and meet- 
ing houses in the dead of a E"ew England winter. There 
was nothing modest about some of the designs, if we 
may believe the old advertisements, which describe pat- 
terns call^ " liberty peak," "Covent Garden crossbar," 
" Ranelagh half -moon," and a " fine check inclosing 
Four Lions I^ampant and three flours de Luce." Some 



170 THE QUAKER. 

were adorned with the portraits of political heroes, like 
Washington and Franklin. We are further told that 
these designs were stamped by blocks for the hand, 
which are still in existence.* The New England 
mantua-maker of 1668 charged eight shillings per day 
— a fair comparison with a modern seamstress — and 
the dressmaker who made np the calicoes a hundred 
years later got no more. A young married woman, 
who was a Friend, wrote to her sister from Washing- 
ton, Dutchess County, New York, Seventh month 13th, 
1828: 

Yesterday was Preparative Meeting. The clerk was a young 
girl, I think not twenty years of age, dressed in a painted mus- 
lin, with a very large figure, almost white, a cape with a small 
transparent handkerchief round the neck, and a bonnet of white 
silk in the real English fashion, gathered very full, and altogether 
the most showy looking clerk I ever saw. . . . 

I went over to the store yesterday and bought a real calico 
gown, a dress one, — light, to put on afternoons, when it is too 
cold for gingham, as it mostly is in this elevated region. I find 
it necessary to be pretty much dressed all the time if one is to 
keep up with the custom of the house. Even Mother made up 
a white apron, as she says she did not bring one, thinking they 
w'd not be worn here, but she finds her mistake. 

The large figures became more modest later on. On 
the back of an old letter, dated 1833, in my grand- 
mother's handwriting, I find the following memoran- 
dum : " Very small figures are the fashion here now for 
waistcoats and for gowns too." 

Just before this she had written: 

I can't bear to wear anything but crepe handkerchiefs this hot 
weather. . . . Short sleeves only are wearable either. I have not 
yet ventured to cut off more than one pair, but think I shall. 

♦Alice Morse Earle, " Costume of Colonial Times," p. 74. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. I7I 

These calicoes and figured stuffs were so famous for 
their large design that what to-day would seem to us 
a very conspicuous figure, was considered proper for 
Kebecca Jones to wear in Philadelphia on the occasion 
of her first appearance in the ministry. The original 
material is really a printed brown linen; the name of 
calico seems to have been of general application to 
stuffs of this sort. The early Friends had borne their 
testimony against these flights of fancy,* but " flour'd 
and figured things " have seemed to recur in feminine 
costume in some form ever since the days of Mother 
Eve. 

It is hard to imagine the Quaker woman without her 
shawl; yet that article of dress was not worn in this 
country until 1784, when " a rich assortment of 
shawls " was advertised in Salem, Mass. The garment 
was the result of the East India trade, just beginning at 
this time, and was not worn in Europe much before the 
opening of the present century. An observant attender 
of Quaker meetings must have noted the manner in 
which the plain Quakeress sometimes takes her seat, as, 
with a hand behind her, palm outward, she gives an in- 
describable little " flip " to the corner of her shawl, to 
turn it up behind at the moment of seating herself to 
avoid wrinkles in the tail! The air with which that 
^' flip '' is sometimes given by a quick-motioned young 
woman, is levity itself. And none but the initiated 
can know of the art involved in donning the plain shawl 

*"lst of 5 mo., 1693, Minute 7th. Before a minute offered to the 
Quarterly Meeting, concerning Fr'ds making, ordering, or selling striped 
cloths silks, or stuffs, or any sort of flour'd, figur'd things of different 
colours. It 18 the judgment of the Quarterly Meet'g that Friends ought to 
stand clear of such things." Unlocated. Copy by H. Hull, New York, 
1850. 



172 TS^ QUAKER. 

properly; the depth of the three folds exactlyin the cen- 
ter of the back of the neck, and the size of the pin that 
holds them; the pin on the tip of each shoulder, to hold 
the fullness in sufficient firmness, without pulling, and 
without showing that it is a pin; and the momentous 
decision whether the point of the shawl is exactly in 
the middle, or not — indeed, there are impressive mo- 
ments in the lives of all women. 

Some form of cloak, usually hooded, was universal 
before the simplicity of the shawl commended itself at 
first sight to the Quakeress of the nineteenth century. 
The return of the Emperor E'apoleon from his campaign 
in Egypt, bringing to Josephine some beautiful cash- 
mere shawls, gave that garment a great vogue in 1807. 
"^ The Empress took an immense fancy to the shawl, and 
there was a time at which she was scarcely ever seen 
without one in the morning. It is said that ^' she had 
about -&ve hundred, for many of which she had given as 
much as ten or twelve thousand francs. The Emperor 
did not like to see her wrapped in her shawls within 
doors, and sometimes pulled them off and threw them in 
the fire, but she always sent for another.'' 

The ^^ Belle Assemblee " discourages the shawl. It 



It is only wonderful, that such an article of dress should ever 
have found its path to fashionable adoption in the various cir- 
cles of British taste. In its form, nothing can be more opposed 
to every principle of refined taste, or carry less the appearance 
of that elegant simplicity at which it aims. It is calculated 
much more to conceal and vulgarize than to display or regulate 
the contour of an elegant form, and is totally destitute of every 
idea of ease, elegance, or dignity. Whatever charms it may have 
for the sickly taste of the tawny BELLES of the torrid zone, 
nothing but that witching beauty which occasionally veils itself 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 173 

in the rusticity and homeliness (like the sun, its mists and 
clouds) that it may dazzle anew, with the refulgent splendor of 
its taste and charm, could render even tolerable the introduction 
of an habiliment Avhich turns any female NOT beautiful and ele- 
gant into an absolute DOWDY. IT is the very contrast to the 
flowing elegance of the Grecian costume, whose light and trans- 
parent draperies so admirably display the female form.* 

A Quaker poet thus expressed himself later: 

Observe yon belles! behold the waspish waist! 

See the broad bishop spreading far behind; 
The shawl immense, with uncouth figures graced, 

And veil loose waving in the playful wind; 
Mark the huge bonnets, stuck on hills of hair. 
Like meteors streaming in the turbid air.f 

The impressions of the life and manners of the seven 
sisters Gurney, of Norwich, England, by A. J. C. 
Hare,:j: show the Quaker influence at work on a set of 
young people to whom no privileges of culture or re- 
finement had ever been denied. The family to which 
belonged Joseph John and his talented sister, Elizabeth 
Gurney, better known by her married name of Eliza- 
beth Ery, may well merit a little attentive study. Har- 
riet Martineau describes the sisters as '^a set of dash- 
ing young people, dressing in gay riding habits and 
scarlet boots, and riding about the country to balls and 
gaieties of all sorts. Accomplished and charming 
young ladies they were, and we children used to hear 
whispered gossip about the effect of their charms on 
heart-stricken young men." The seven are said to 

*1807, quoted by Mrs. A. W. Hunt, in " Our Grandmothers' Gowns," 
p. 28. 

t Samuel J. Smith, of Hickory Grove, N. J. 

J Augustus J. C. Hare, " The Gurneys of Earlham." 



174 T^^ QUAKER. 

have linked arms, and in their scarlet * riding-habits, 
in which they scoured the country side on their ponies, 
stopped the great mail-coach from ascending the neigh- 
boring hill ! The brother Daniel states in his " Kemin- 
iscences," that his four younger sisters never wore bon- 
nets on the Earlham grounds, but put on little red 
cloaks in which they ran about as they liked. Louisa 
Gurney (afterward Mrs. Samuel Hoare) writes, June 
6th, 1797, " In the evening I dressed up in Quaker 
things, but I felt far too ashamed to say or act any- 
thing," so strong was the influence of the Quaker spirit. 
The same seven sat in a row in front of the ministers' 
gallery at ISTorwich Meeting. One day Betsey (Eliza- 
beth Fry) had on a pair of " new purple boots lined 
with scarlet,'' which sounds amazingly gorgeous to us 
at this day. Betsey was counting upon the delights of 
the shoes to console her through the tedium she antici- 
pated. But as it proved, this was to be a memorable 
day to her. It was the fourth of February, 1798, and 
Betsey was eighteen. William Savery, the great 
American preacher, was present, and his sermon was so 
forceful and appealed so to her, that she became con- 
vinced of the truth of Quaker principles and became a 
Quaker from that time forth. 

That same meeting seems to have shocked Friend 
Savery, for he wrote that he found it very gay for a 
Friends' meeting. " There were," he says, " about two 
hundred under our name, very few middle aged. I 
thought it the gayest meeting of Friends I ever sat in, 
and was quite grieved at it. . . . Marks of wealth and 
grandeur are too evident in several families in this 

* " Kutusoff " mantles of scarlet cloth were much worn later. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 175 

place." Maria Edgeworth describes Elizabeth Fry 
after years had passed, in her " drab-colored silk cloak 
and plain borderless silk cap.'' When Joseph Fry first 
determined to marry Elizabeth Gnrney, if it were possi- 
ble, he saw her in a brown silk gown, with a black lace 
veil bound around her head like a turban, the ends 
pendant on one side of her face, and contrasting with 
her beautiful light brown hair. Kichenda, her sister, 
writes of the " troutbecks " they were all wearing at 
the seaside in 1803. These were hats of that year. 
Eed cloaks are mentioned, and the fashions of the time 
show the brilliant colors of wraps and all outside gar- 
ments of the day to have been very startling. All ex- 
cept the plainest Quakers made some concession to the 
mode. Priscilla Gurney writes to Hannah, her sister, 
afterward the wife of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, " Chenda 
and I wear our dark gowns every day, and our aprons 
in the evening." This was in February, 1803. In 
1805, Louisa Gurney writes to her sister, Elizabeth 
Fry, " I often seem to see thee in thy pink acorn gown 
attending to all thy flock in the dining room," etc. 
This " pink acorn gown " was probably a pattern sim- 
ilar to the calicoes and printed stuffs so popular among 
the Friends at the time, to which reference has already 
been made. We are told that in May, 1807, at the 
marriage of the Buxtons, " The house was overrun with 
bridesmaids in muslin cloaks and chip hats." In 1813, ^■ 
Katherine Fry says, " Our Aunts Catherine and Kachel 
(Gurney) wore no caps, but a headdress of crepe folded 
turbanwise. Both were brown in the morning; in the 
afternoons, Aunt Catherine's were dark red; Aunt 
EacheFs, white. Aunt Eachel also frequently wore 



176 2^^^ QUAKER, 

white muslin dresses. They had few or no ornaments. 
Aunt Catherine always wore dark or black silk, but 
often with a red shawl. Aunt Priscilla, as a Friend, 
was dressed in a dark silk or poplin gown, exquisitely 
neat, finished and refined." The Aunt Catherine who 
was the head of the family, while never a Quaker, al- 
ways regarded the preferences of those who were of that 
faith in her circle, and studied an elegant simplicity of 
dress that was the admiration of her friends, seeking to 
avoid any marked or startling contrasts among the very 
varied views of the sisters. 

Their intimate friend was the author, Amelia Opie ; 
that talented convert to the faith went into it with her 
customary ardor, and the change from worldly garb 
was made at one leap, when once she became convinced 
of the necessity for the sacrifice of her love of color, 
which, as the wife of the artist, John Opie, had been 
more than ordinarily cultivated.* But she seems to 
have seen in the simple elegance of her Quaker friends, 
sufiicient outlet for all artistic aspirations in the realm 
of costume; and certainly no more stately women 
could have been found in the King's domain to set o£F 
the possibilities of silk and satin, when worn with grace 
and distinction. As though partly in explanation of 
what seemed to their friends an extraordinary step, 
Southey wrote of Mrs. Opie: 

I like her in spite of her Quakerism — ^nay, perhaps the better 
for it. It must always be remembered amongst what persons 
she had lived, and that religion was never presented to her in 
a serious form until she saw it in drab. 

♦Joseph John Gurney, in writing of her at this time, says, " Great 
was her agony of mind in view of changing her dress, and of addressing 
her numerous friends and acquaintances by their plain names, and with 
the humbling simplicity of thee and thou." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 177 

So remarkable a figure was that of Elizabeth Fry 
in the elegant simplicity of Quaker dress, whether in 
the prison of I^ewgate, or before the crowned heads of 
Europe, that her dress has become fixed in the public 
mind as the type of woman's Quaker costume. Eliza- 
beth Fry writes to her husband from The Hague, after 
an audience with the King and Queen, in 1847, " I 
wore a dark plain satin, and a new fawn colored silk 
shawl." At this time, however, it was no new thing 
for Elizabeth Fry to wait upon royalty. Her first visit 
to court was made in 1818, when Queen Charlotte com- 
manded her presence at the Mansion House, upon 
which occasion A. J. C. Hare says, ^^ Royalty offered 
its meed of approval at the shrine of mercy and good 
works." The Queen's stature was diminutive; she was 
covered with diamonds, her countenance lighted up 
with an expression of the kindest benevolence. Eliza- 
beth Fry's simple Quaker dress added to the height of 
her tall figure. She was slightly flushed, but kept her 
wonted calm. Her daughter wrote afterward: 

They entered, Lady Harcourt in full court dress, on the arm 
of' Alderman Wood in scarlet gown; and then the Bishop of 
Gloucester (Ryder) in lawn sleeves, leading our darling mother 
in her plain Friend's cap, one of the light scarf cloaks worn by 
plain Friends, and a dark silk gown. I see her now, her light 
flaxen hair, a little flush in her face from the bustle and noise 
she had passed through, and her sweet, lovely, placid smile.* 

Ann Warder, whose interesting Journal covers three 
years, from 1786 to 1789, among the Friends of Phila- 
delphia and vicinity, gives us vivid pictures of life in 
the young republic, and the privilege of quoting from 

*A. J. C. Hare, " The Gurneys of Earlham." 



178 TEE QUAKER. 

its unpublished pages has been gladly availed of. She 
tells us that upon landing from the ship Edward, in 
]^ew York, in 1786, they were taken at once to the 
home of a Friend of the family. ^^ The woman Friend 
of the house came up, and as a mark of her welcome, 
untied my cap to help strip me.'' At this period, Ann 
Warder was twenty-eight. On being told that her ap- 
pearance was singular, she explained that " countries 
differed; riding dresses with us were very much worn, 
and mine in England would be esteemed a plain one. 
This is a specimen of their singularity on this Island 
[Long Island] ; scarce any had Buckles, and not a 
looped hat did I see." When word reached Philadel- 
phia by messenger of the arrival of John Warder and 
his English wife, ten minutes sufficed to see their 
Brother Jeremiah and his wife on their way to l^ew 
York to meet them. Haste probably accounts for the 
appearance of the new arrival from the South, who is 
thus described by the English woman, and contrasted 
with her husband, his brother. She allows us to see 
the unconventional dress of the Quaker of that day: 

His dress unstudied, a Cocked Hat, Clumsy Boots, Bro-v^Ti cloth 
large Breeches, Black Velvet Waistcoat, light old Cazemar [cassi- 
mere] coat, handkerchie instead of stock which is tied on with- 
out much pains. Conceive J. W. [her husband] with "his suit — 
Nankeen Inexpressibles and white silk stockings, much more re- 
sembling an English gentleman. 

She adds: 

The women I have seen at present appear Indolent, which may 
perhaps be a reason for Mother Warder's bearing such a high 
character for notability. 

To be a " notable " housewife was to reach woman's 
summit of social ambition at that day among the Quak- 
ers. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, I79 

Got B. Parker to go out shoping with me. On our way hap- 
pened of Uncle Head, to whom I complained bitterly of the dirty 
streets, declaring if I could purchase a pair of pattens, the sin- 
gularity I would not mind. Uncle soon found me up an apartment, 
out of which I took a pair and trotted along quite Comfortable, 
crossing some Streets with the greatest ease, which the idea of 
had troubled me. My little companion was so pleased, that she 
wished some also, and kept them on her feet to learn to walk 
in them most of the remainder of the day. 

The patten and clog are often spoken of interchange- i^ 
ably, but the clog is of vastly greater antiquity. The 
patten dates from the reign of Queen Anne, and is 
raised on a supporting ring; an excellent example may 
be seen in the museum of Independence Hall. Gay's 
charming explanation of their origin in his ^' Trivia " 
will, of course, come in mind. The clog in the illustra- 
tion is from a beautiful pair carefully preserved in E'ew 
Jersey. The hollow for the heel, and the preposterous 
elevation on the instep, designed to fill the arch of the 
foot in the companion shoe or slipper, are explained, 
and the illustration from our originals almost dupli- 
cated, in Fairholt's " Costume in England," which may 
be properly regarded as the final authority on matters 
of historical costume. 

An insane woman remarked on Ann Warder's ap- 
pearance when she visited the asylum in Philadelphia, 
that she (A. W.) was the " most clumsy woman in the 
party, but she believed it was because she had on too 
many petticoats." 

I could not help being struck with two women Minister's ap- 
pearance, both having Drab Silk Gowns, and Black Pasteboard 
Bonnets on. To see an old man stand up with a Mulberry Coat, 
Nankeen Waistcoat and Breeches with white stockings would 
look very Singular in England. My cap is the admiration of 
plain and gay. 



180 ^^^ QUAKER. 

A shopping expedition is recorded to find white 
leather mitts. " In not less than twenty [shops] did we 
ask for them before we succeeded; there is no place 
regular for different trades, as with us." 

The apron, as we have seen, had its day of popular- 
ity, and it is perhaps interesting to notice that the 
sleeve, which early in the seventeenth century was 
often a separate article of dress, after the old custom 
from the time of the Wars of the Roses, was apt to be 
of another color than the gown, and green was still the 
fashionable shade at this period. A famous old song 
of the time, in everybody's mouth, was ^' My Lady 
Greensleeves.'' It is mentioned by Shakespeare in 
the " Merry Wives of Windsor," where Falstaff says: 
*' Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune 
of ' Green-Sleeves.' " (Act V., Scene 5.) Part of the 
old song is as follows: * 

Alas, my love, you do me wrong 

To cast me off discourteously; 
And I have loved you so long, 

Delighting in your company. 

Greensleeves was all my joy, 
Greensleeves was my delight; 
Greensleeves was my heart of Gold, 
And Who but Lady Greensleeves? 

I have been ready at your hand 

To grant whatever you would crave; 
I have both waged life and land 
Your goodwill for to have. 

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing 

But still thou hadst it readily. 
Thy music still to play and sing; 

And yet thou wouldst not love me. 

♦From " A Handful of Pleasant Delites," by Clement Robinson, 1584. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 181 

My men were clothed all in green, 

And they did ever wait on thee. 
All this was gallant to be seen^ 

And yet thou wouldst not love me. 

They set thee up, they took thee down, 

They served thee with humility, 
Thy foot might not once touch the ground, 

And yet thou wouldst not love me. 

Thy gown was of the grassy green. 

Thy sleeves of satin hanging by. 
Which made thee be our harvest queen. 

And yet thou wouldst not love me. 

Greensleeves, now farewellj adieu! 

God I pray to prosper thee! 
For I am still thy lover true; 

Come once again and love me, 

Walter Eutherford is quoted by Miss Wharton as 
objecting violently to " a late abominable fashion from 
London, of ladies like Washerwomen with their sleeves 
above their elbows.'^ This was in 1790. Elbow sleeves 
were worn by all the plain Friends at one time; and 
long " mitts/' reaching to the shoulder, elaborate and 
exquisitely plaited linen and fine muslin under-sleeves, 
with the little gold link buttons to fasten them at the 
ends, are now in my possession. Through the latter haK 
of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, all plain women Friends wore gowns with low 
neck and short sleeves. This, I think, may be taken 
as an universal rule. The neck was protected by a 
dainty muslin or lawn handkerchief, folded across the 
bosom and pinned at the waist on each side. Over this 
was worn a soft silk shawl, and the shades of delicate 
gray or drab were often productive of the most exquis- 
ite effects, with a fresh young face. The young girl 



182 



TEE QUAKER, 




Hannah Hunt, 
Westtown's Pirst Scholar. 
1799. 

(Aetatll.) 



put on her cap before she was fairly grown up; and 
the first little girl sent to Westtown School in Penn- 
sylvania, in 1799, wore a cap of 
large proportions. No baby came 
into the world, whether of Quak- 
erdom or of fashion, in the last 
century, without at once having its 
hairless little pate clapped into a 
more or less uncompromising cap, 
many of those still in existence 
being very elaborately embroid- 
ered. But we might forgive them 
for refusing to the little head the 
proper circulation of air, if they 
had not sinned in a far worse way 
when they at once enclosed the poor little ribs in the 
most cruel of stays. For a long time, I tried to per- 
suade myself that it was only the ultra-fashionable (or 
the Chinese) that so treated their offspring. But, alas ! 
the pair of stiff, diminutive stays in my own possession 
has never been in the hands of the " world's people '' ; 
they come straight to me from a long line of Quaker 
ancestry, and I am reluctantly forced to believe that it 
was my own great-grandmother who refused freedom 
to the small ribs of her children, and laced the uncom- 
promising implement of torture on her new-born in- 
fant. There are even now certain conservative women 
across the border in Canada, who still put their babies 
in tight jackets of this kind immediately after their 
birth, under the impression, which I suppose animated 
our great-grandmothers, that the small body needed 
" support, '^ forsooth, much more than freedom ! 



A STUDY IN COSTUME, 183 

When the children got to be of a suitable age for 
such instruction, literature like the following was read 
to them, with what effect, either on manners or morals, 
we are not told: 

Counsel to Friends' Children. 

Written at Coggeshall, Essex, 

1745, by Anthony Purver.* 

Dear little Friends, not tainted yet with ill, 
By Sense not biassed, nor misled by Will; 

Dress not to please, nor imitate the Nice; 
Be like good Friends, and follow their Advice. 
The rich man, gaily eloth'd, is now in Hell, 
And Dogges did eat attirSd Jezebel. 

Speak truly still, with Thou and Thee to One 
As unto God; and feed the Pride in None; 
Give them no flatt'ring Titles, tho' they scoff. 
Lest God, provok'd, should quickly cut you off. 
Him only did not the three Children fear. 
And with their Hats before the King appear? 

It may be set down as a safe rule, in seeking for a 
Quaker style or custom at any given time, to take the 
worldly fashion or habit of the period preceding. 
When the mode changes, and a style is dropped, the 
Quaker will be found just ready to adopt it, having by 
that time become habituated to its use. Of all this 
process he is quite unconscious; the philosophy of such 
matters having never been presented to him. He 
might, indeed, shrink from the suggestion that there is 
any philosophy of clothes, at all; but Carlyle has so 

* Anthony Purver was born at Uphurstborn, near Whitechurch, in 
1702, and died at Andover, Hampshire, 1777, aged 75. He was buried in 
the Friends' grounds at the latter place. 



184 "^SE QUAKER. 

taught us. A very modern instance of this familiariz- 
ing process and ultimate acceptance of what, on its first 
appearance, is set down as a vain fashion, is the recent 
adoption in one of the largest boarding-schools in the 
society, and the only plain one, of the ordinary straw 
sailor-hat among the girls, just as its popularity is on 
the wane. 

It will be noted that during the period following the 
time of William Penn up to that of the summit of Eliza- 
beth Fry's fame — an interval of nearly one hundred 
and fifty years — there was no established type of 
Quaker dress, l^o woman of the society had ever 
come before the public eye in such a way as to impress 
it with her personality, or stamp her character upon 
the public mind. Elsewhere, I have indicated that the 
witchcraft persecutions had caused the preaching 
woman who was the contemporary of William Penn, 
who came from the same class of society as the witch 
who was hung or burned with such wanton cruelty on 
both sides the Atlantic, and who wore a garb exactly 
similar, to be seized upon as the type of our nursery 
" witch." The most conspicuous instance was taken; 
otherwise, we should have had the Quaker woman in 
her cap and pointed hat, her apron and her high-heeled 
shoes, standing beside William Penn upon our boxes 
of Quaker oats. But during the interval that followed 
the preaching of the first Quaker women, in the fields 
and on upturned tubs in the halls and kitchens of the 
early Quakers, no striking Quaker woman arose, until, 
at ]^ewgate, appeared Elizabeth Fry's beautiful figure 
in its exquisite setting. The great movement in Eng- 
land toward prison reform organized by her noble 



fim 



Elizabeth Fry, 1780-184^. 

After the portrait by George Richmond, 1824. 



1 


pp 


■ 


B 


|ffl 


11 


^^ 


i4iiH 


ij 






1 



^ STUDY IN COSTUME. 185 

effort, has made her the type of the Quaker woman for 
all time. 

A Meditation on the Pride of Women's Appaeel. 

(From "A New Spring of Divine Poetry," James Day, 1637. Percy 
Society. Vol. XXVII, p. 143.) 

See how some borrow'd off-cast vaine attire, 

Can puflF up pamper'd clay and dirty mire: 

Tell me, whence hadst thy cloaths that make thee fine, 

Was't not the silly sheep's before 'twas thine? 

Doth not the silk-worm and the oxe's hide. 

Serve to maintain thee in thy cheefest pride? 

Do'st not thou often with those feathers vaile 

Thy face, with which the ostridge hides her taile? 

What art thou proud of, then? me thinks 'tis fit 

Thou shouldst be humble for the wearing it: 

Tell me, proud madam; thou that art so nise, 

How were thy parents clad in Paradise? 

At first they wore the armour of defence. 

And were eompleatly wrapt in innocence: 

Had they not sin'd, they ne're had been dismald, 

Nor needed not the fig-tree's leavy ayde! 

Whatever state, O Lord, thou place me in. 

Let me not glory in th' effect of sin. 




" Madam, I do as is my duty — 
Honour the shadow of your shoe-tie." 

— Eudibreu. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE QUAKER BONNET. 

Then let Fashion exult in her rapid vagaries ; 

From her fascinations my favorite is free ; 
Be Folly's the headgear that momently varies, 

But a Bonnet of Drab is the bonnet for me. 

Bernard Barton, 

Borrow' d guise fits not the wise— 

A simple look is best ; 
Native grace becomes a face 

Though ne'er so rudely drest. 

Thomat Oampiont 1612. 




CHAPTEK V. 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE QUAKER BONNET. 

■ one brought up within the fold it 
is no light matter to approach so 
awful a subject as the Quaker bon- 
net. There was a certain sol- 
emnity about it that was born of 
terror. Whether it presided at 
the head of the women's meeting, 
or ventured in winter storms, pro- 
tected in its satin or oil-skin case under the Triendlj 
umbrella, or even lay alone in splendid state upon the 
bed of the welcome guest — anywhere, everywhere, it 
was a solemn thing. Born of much meditation, con- 
structed with care and skill and many pricks (if not of 
conscience, at least of fingers *) ; with time and money 
and eyesight lavished recklessly upon it, that no devia- 
tion of a pleat from the pattern, or tint from the 
color, or grain from the quality might be wanting — 
shades of our grandmothers ! Can we get our bonnet 
sufficiently in perspective to realize that it is already a 
matter of history, that the next generation will know 
the true Quaker bonnet no more, and that if some of 
these matters of custom and costume of the past among 
the Friends are not soon preserved, valuable oppor- 
tunities for future students of the Quaker will be lost ? 
Let us try. 

* Plain bonnet-making was a trade exceedingly hard on the fingers. 



190 THE QUAKER. 

Again it becomes necessary, in order to study the 
Quaker headdress, to examine first the worldly bonnet 
and mode of dressing the hair. The clue to all the 
changes within the Society may be found without; and 
not a pleat of the bonnet as now worn by the plainest 
Friend; not a turn of the shawl, not a flare of the coat 
nor a roll of the hat-brim, but had its origin at some 
remote day — let us whisper it softly — in Paris ! There 
was a time when the bonnet, which for the sake of dis- 
tinction, we shall call Elizabeth Fry's — the " techni- 
cal " Quaker bonnet, so to speak, known among the ir- 
reverent as the " coal-scuttle,'' or " sugar-scoop," or 
" stifl-pleat " — was a new thing in America. It came 
to this country on the head of an accredited English 
woman Friend, Martha Eouth,* who was also a min- 
ister; and echoes of its coming had preceded her. A 
contemporary journal, still in existence, tells us: 

Martha Routh, a Minister of the Gospel from Old England, 
was at Goshen (Pennsylvania) Meeting the 11th. day of 11th. mo. 
1798; was a means (if I mistake not) of bringing bonnets in fash- 
ion for our leading Frd's, and hoods or Caps on the Cloaks in 
the Galleries, which of Latter time the Hoods on the Cloaks 
of our overseers and other active members have increased to an 
alarming hight or size: — how unlike the dress of their grand- 
mothers! f 

What should we not give to behold that same 
" dress of their grandmothers ! " Martha Routh 
made a second visit to America in 1802. She writes in 
her Journal on her return home after her first visit that 

* Martha Routh, born 1743, died 1817. 

"I^From "A Memorandum Book belonging to Eunion Cook, of 
Birmingham, Chester county, Pennsylvania," dated 1820. Ennion Cook 
was the village schoolmaster, and the old memorandum book is in posses- 
sion of a descendant. 



.t>\"V 



X*"' 



AV^Vi\{V 



Martha Rottthy I743'i8i7> 

Silhouette in possession of Charles Roberts, of Philadelphia. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 191 

thej were taken by a French privateer, when a young 
man in the boarding party remarked to her that she 
and her women companions looked like the nuns in 
France. " I told him," she says, " that we were 
Friends or Quakers, and inquired if they had heard of 
such in their country ? He replied that they had." * 
But American Friends have always been more con- 
servative in their dress than their English cousins, 
probably because the latter's proximity to the conti- 
nent forced them into more cosmopolitan habits. At 
any rate, American Friends were shocked at the giddy 
structure. But time went on. They gazed, they ad- 
mired, they stole a furtive pattern; they made the ven- 
ture, and behold! When a synonym was wanted for 
conservatism, for stability, for all things that endure, 
it was found in the Quaker bonnet. How sad that it 
must soon be as extinct as the dodo ! To understand 
the evolution of this bonnet, it is necessary to go back 
more than three hundred years, and see through what 
changes the worldly bonnet has passed. 

The faces of fifteenth century women, declares 
VioUet le Due, were of a uniform type; the prevailing 
style of headdress during the Wars of the Roses hav- 
ing a tendency to cause a superficial resemblance 
among persons really unlike. Individuality is ob- 
scured by the universal adoption of a distinctive effect 
in bonnets or gowns. This illusion of similarity is 
marked among the few existing portraits of that period, 
when the imposing ^^ steeple headdress " was the 
mode. That towering structure was composed of rolls 
and rolls of long linen, reaching two feet above the 



* Journal of Martha Routh, p. 280. 



192 TEE QUAKER. 

head, and going to a point like an extinguisher, from 
whose apex floated a long gauzy veil. Until the evo- 
lution of the Quaker bonnet, no headdress existed 
lending such uniformity of type to the faces it sur- 
mounted, the " commode " and the " high head " not 
excepted. The " head rail " of the Saxon period, and 
the " wimple " or " gorget '' of Plantagenet times, 
came down to the early seventeenth century as the 
hood, with which we shall presently make closer ac- 
quaintance. The " head rail " was not shaped at all, 
but consisted merely of a long piece of linen or stuff 
drawn over the head like a hood, and loosely wrapped 
about the neck, the grace of the latter movement, even 
on the most ungainly, exceeding that of the partly 
shaped wimple, which was more attractive in early 
English poetry than in actual life ! The wimple was of 
silk or white cloth; and when discarded by the women 
of the period was retained as the " gorget " by the 
nuns, who to-day may thus trace the origin of the white 
band worn about face and throat, under 
the black hood.* So universal was the 
hood that men as well as women wore it; 
and it remained in general use until the 
time of Henry VIILf About 1644, both 
in France and England, we find again 
the " coif," usually worn in black, and 
really another form of hood of crepe or 
taffetas, brought forward and tied under the chin.:t^ 
Small bonnets or hoods, with two long " pattes," behind 

♦Hill, " History of English Dress." Vol. I., p. 61. 

t See chapter on Hats. 

JQuicherat, "Histoire de Costume." 




A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



193 



the ears, or ^^ mouchoirs '' with lace, or " toquets '' of 
velvet (called " bonnets de plumes " because worn with 
so many plumes), were all tentatively suggesting the 
coming riot of headdress. A handkerchief of lace fas- 
tened with a pin, covered the hair in the time of Riche- 
lieu; and the " coif " of deshabille, often called the 
" round bonnet '' (" sans passe ? ") became the bonnet 
after many years seen in the accompanying engraving 
of the " Fair Quaker." French women of the lower 
classes, and servants, wore the " coif " with two long 
" drapeaux " or " bavolettes " streaming down be- 
hind — doubtless the origin of the modern " bavolet." 
English women of the common- 
alty in the seventeenth century 
wore broad hats like the men, of 
beaver, with lower crowns, and 
caps beneath, tied at the chin. 
The black beaver hat was also 
popular for riding. It was not 
a universal custom with the low- 
er classes at this period to cover 
the head at all; while shortly 
after, by way of contrast, Pepys 
tells us that the aristocracy did 
not remove the hat, even at table. When the wimple was 
worn under the hat, the latter was fastened on with a 
hat-pin; so that there is truly nothing new under the 
sun, not even this modern convenience. At the end of 
Queen Anne's reign, the revival of the silk trade gave 
a temporary popularity again to the silk hood. The 
pointed beaver hat with the cap below, although 
chiefly a middle-class costume, was in vogue among a 




1635. 
(From Hollar.) 



194 



THE QUAKER. 



few of the plainer in taste of the aristocracy, as may be 
seen in the portrait of Hester Pooks, second wife of 
John Tradescant, the younger. She lived from 1608 
until 1678; her portrait hangs on the stairway of the 
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. She wears a costume 
exactly similar to the Quakeress Tub-Preacher, includ- 
ing cap and peaked beaver hat, the only difference in 
dress being the rich lace upon her gown. 

This peculiar headdress has remained from the time 
of James I. (who is responsible for the beaver hat in 
this form) to the present day among the Welsh women; 
and almost all of the earliest prints of the Quaker 
women who preach, show them dressed in this cap and 
hat. It is impossible, in examining any of these pic- 
tures, to avoid the suggestion that here is the hat of the 
conventional witch of our childhood — the old woman, 
who, for so many years, has swept the cobwebs from the 
sky; and we are justified in the conclusion. The steeple- 
crowned hat was worn over the 
hood about the period between 
1650 and 16Y5; it was popular 
with the middle and lower 
classes, and familiar throughout 
the kingdom. It will be remem- 
bered that the terrible witch 
trials of the Continent, England 
and Massachusetts in America, 
all culminated during the latter 
half of the seventeenth century, 
the sufferers being chiefly drawn 
from the class who wore this dress. What more natural 
and inevitable than that the woman who wore so 




From "Memoires, etc. 
d'Angleterre." 1698. 



The Quakers' Meeting. 

About 1648. 
After the original engraving by Egbert van HeetmJ^erck. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



195 



striking a garb should need but a broomstick to en- 
able her to set out as the typical witch, in her journey 
to immortality and posterity ? * The ideal Quaker 
man's garb is that of this period, as seen in the well- 
known broad-brim of William Penn, immortalized even 
in " Quaker Oats," and on boxes of lye. But the proper 
companion for him is the witch of story; while, curi- 
ously enough, the type of the Quakeress did not crys- 
talize until time gave us Elizabeth Fry, a century and 
a haK later. 

Soon after this early period the " City Flat Caps " 
became prominent, and were worn by both sexes in a 
modified form. The edict went forth that the three- 
cornered minever caps for 
women should not be worn 
by the wives of those who 
were not " gentlemen by 
descent." f The little black 
hood, in the Stuart period, 
was getting to be thought 
old-fashioned, but its be- 
comingness retained it long 
in popularity. The large 
" capuchins," of which we 
read for many years after 
this, were riding-hoods, very popular among the 
young Quakeresses. It was probably this style of hood 
whose strings annoyed the dear men Friends of South- 




*The high-crowned hats and point-lace aprons in which the " Merry- 
Wives of Windsor " are often shown, belong properly to the seventeenth 
century and not the fifteenth. The pointed hat is still the stock property 
of old women to the present day. 

fGeorgiana Hill, " History of English Dress." Vol. I., p. 226. 



196 y^^ QUAKER. 

wark Meeting, London, in 1707, bj dangling down on 
their heads when hung on the rail above. These " capu- 
chins " were ample enough for storm garments, and, in- 
deed, belonged properly under that head.* The meet- 
ing records say : 

It being taken notice of that several women Friends at the 
Park Meeting do usually hang their riding-hoods on the rail of 
the gallery, whereby the Friends that sit under the rail of the 
gallery are incommoded, It's left to Robert Fairman and Mary 
Fairman to take order for remedying the same.f 

The " capuchin " came into this country as a fashion- 
able hooded cloak early in the eighteenth century, and 
shared its popularity with the smaller " cardinal/' a 
similar garment or hood, so named because the original 
was of scarlet cloth, like the mozetta of a cardinal. 
The capuchin (named from its resemblance to the gar- 
ment distinguishing the monks of that order) was worn 
by high and low, rich and poor, plain and gay; and the 
Friends talked unhesitatingly about their " capuchins " 
and " cardinals," when nothing would have induced 
them to mention the " heathen " days of the week, or 
the months of the year ! Such things do even ^^ con- 
sistent " Friends come to when they seek a literal 
gospel. 

The old hood came with the Pilgrims into ISTew Eng- 
land, and for two centuries was worn by high and low. 
The subject of covering the head had been receiving 
the attention of the Puritan divines, and they exceeded 



* Other varieties of these were, " hongrelines," "cabans," " royal es," 
" balandras," " houppelandes," " mandilles," " roquets," etc. Quieherat, 
" Histoire de Costume en France," p. 458. 

t Beck and Ball, " History of London Friends' Meetings," p. 227. 




A STUDY IN COSTUME. 197 

the Quakers in their notice of such matters. It must 
at no time be thought that the Quakers were alone in 
their extreme care for the dress 
of their constituency. The Puri- 
tan clergymen preached more 
about bonnets and hats than ever 
the Quakers did ; and their 
opinions were very varied. For 
instance, Mr. Davenport, at I^ew 
Haven, preached that the men, 
upon the announcement of the 
text, should remove their hats Cromwell's Time. 

1 . 1 nr TTTMT (After Repton.) 

and stand up; Mr. Williams, un- 
der whose care was the flock at Salem, Massachusetts, 
exhorted the women of his congregation to wear 
veils during public worship, quoting Scripture pre- 
cedent, of course; while a brisk discussion took 
place between Cotton and Endicott, at Boston, 
on the 7th of March, 1633, at the "Thursday 
Lecture," as to whether all women should veil them- 
selves when going abroad. Mr. Cotton argued that, as 
by the custom of the place, veils were not considered in 
^ew England a sign of the subjection of women, they 
were in this case not commanded by the Apostle. 
Endicott took the other side, demanding the proper 
covering of the head, particularly in time of worship. 
Soon after, at Salem, Cotton preached so effectively, 
that one Sabbath day sermon sufficed to convince his 
female hearers of the correctness of his attitude, and 
the veil did not become customary."^ 

*Dr. Dexter, " As to Roger Williams," p. 31. 



198 THE QUAKER. 

A sumptuary law of James II., in Scotland, ordains, 
" That noe woman come to the kirk or mercat [mar- 
ket] with her face mussled, that sche may nocht be 
kend, under the pane of escheit of the curchie." * 
There were many minds. 

The World, a periodical for 1753, contains a let- 
ter condemning the ladies for wearing their hats in the 
churches during divine service, as transgressing against 
the laws of decency and decorum. At the arraignment 
of Ann Turner before the King's Bench in 1615, for 
the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury: 

The Lord Chief Justice told her that women must be covered 
in the church, but not when they are arraigned, and so caused 
her to put off her hat; which being done, she covered her hair 
with her handkerchief, being before dressed in her hair, and her 
hat over it.f 

In 1726, an advertisement in the Boston News Letter 
of September relates the loss of a hood: 

On the Sabbath, the 28th of August last, was taken away or 
Stole out of a Pew at the Old North Meeting House, A Cinnamon 
Colour'd Woman's Silk Camblet Riding-Hood, the head faced 
with Black Velvet. 

We are tempted to hope the ^^ cinnamon colour'd 
woman " got her hood back again ! :j: 

The hat was a fashionable rival to the hood, and both 
men and women alike appeared in felt, beaver and 
castor hats. The earliest variety of the Puritan hat 
knew no difference for the two sexes. A " straw hatt " 
left in the will of Mary Harris, of which Mrs. Earle 
tells us, was a great rarity in New London in the year 
1655, and would have been so equally in London itself 

* Percy See. Vol. XXVII., p. 77. 

tArchaeologia. Vol. XXVII., p. 61. 

J W. R. Bliss, " Side Glimpses from the Colonial Meeting-house." 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



199 



at tlie same date. We should much like to know what 

might have been the shape of the " Ladies ]^ewest 

Fashion White Beaver Riding-Hats/' advertised for 

sale in Boston in 1773. They had been called an 

"affectation " by all but the ultra-fashionable. Pepys, 

the ever-watchful, notices one of the earliest hats with 

commendation. " I took boat again/' he says, " being 

mightily struck with a woman in a hat that stood on 

the key." * By degrees the tall, steeple-crowned hats 

became relegated to the country women, and the poorer 

class in the towns. Ward, speaking of an assembly of 

" fat, motherly flat-caps," at Billingsgate, says : 

Their chief Clamour was against High heads and Patches; and 
said it would have been a very good Law, if Queen Mary had ef- 
fected her design and brought the proud Minks's to have worn 
High Crowned Hats instead of Top-Knots.f 

Elizabeth, the mother 
of Cromwell, sacrifices 
no taste to her Puritan- 
ism, but wears a hand- 
kerchief with broad point 
lace, and a green velvet 
" cardinal," the hood just 
described as affected by 
the Quaker women. A 
lady of rank, in Paris, 
in 1664, is shown in a 
hood of the same style. 
Indeed, in these stormy 




Puritan times, some peo- 



*Pepys' Diary, June 11th, 1666. 

t Misson, London Spy. Quoted by Ashton. See also letters of Mme. 
de Sevigne for a description of her daughter's hair, as arranged by Martin, 
court hair-dresser. 



200 TEE QUAKER. 

pie came to regard plain dress as an affectation, 
put on just as the French ladies at the court of 
Marie Antoinette all took to playing dairymaid. 
Still another hood for riding was the ^^ Mthesdale " of 
the early eighteenth century, l^o garments were more 
popular than this and the " cardinal " among the young 
Quakeresses, as letters of the period testify. 

The Riding-Hood. 

Let traitors against kings conspire, 
Let secret spies great statesmen hire, 
Nought shall be by detection got. 
If women may have leave to plot; 
There's nothing clos'd with bars or locks 
Can hinder nightrayls, pinners, smocks, 
For they will everywhere make good, 
As now they've done the Riding-hood. 

Oh thou, that by this sacred wife. 

Hast saved thy liberty and life, 

And by her wits immortal pains. 

With her quick head hast sav'd thy brains: 

Let all designs her worth adorn, 

Sing her anthem night and morn, 

And let thy fervent zeal make good, 

A reverence for the Riding-hood.* 

The song, of which these are the last two stanzas, 
was composed after the battle of Preston, when Sir 
William Maxwell, Earl of Mthesdale, and a supporter 
of the house of Stewart, was taken prisoner. He was 
tried and sentenced to death. By the skill of his 
Countess, who disguised him in her dress and large 
hood, he escaped from the Tower the evening before 
the sentence was to have been executed, and died in 

* Percy Society. Vol. XXVII., p. 207. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 201 

Home in 1744. The pluck of the heroic Countess was 
celebrated throughout England, and the hood which so 
largely contributed to the success of the disguise, be- 
came thereafter known as the " Mthesdale." 

The " mob " was a rather slovenly undress, always 
spoken of disparagingly. There were advertised 
" Women's laced Head-Cloths," commonly called 
" Quaker's Primers," and " Dowds." * The later tur- 
bans of the " Cranf ord " ladies will at once come to 
mind, although this formidable headdress was for elabo- 
rate and state occasions as well. A beautiful painting 
in the Louvre by Sir Thomas Lawrence of J. Anger- 
stein and his wife, shows the turban at its best. From >^ 
the first quarter of the eighteenth century until the 
period of the French Kevolution, ladies' headdress un- 
derwent rapid and appalling changes. A satirical 
pamphlet (quoted by Quicherat) names " coiffures a la 
culbutte " and " a la daguine "; in 1750 we find them 
*' en dorlette," ^* en papillon," " en equivoque," " en 
vergette," " en desespoir," " en tete do mouton." 
Mademoiselle Duthe is described as wearing " un bon- 
net de conquete assuree! " Changes were made with 
lightning rapidity. A despairing beau in the London 
Magazine^ in April, 1762, wrote: 

Then of late, you're so fickle that few people mind you; 
For my part, I never can tell where to find you! 
Now dressed in a cap, now naked in none, 
Now loose in a mob, now close in a Joan: 
Without handkerchief now, and now buried in ruflf; 
Now plain as a Quaker, now all of a puff.f 

* Ashton, " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," p. 134. 
fFrom "A Repartee," London Magazine, April, 1762. 




202 THE QUAKER, 

A " Lavinia " unbleached chip hat, trimmed with 
white sarsenet ribbon, was shown in 1810. The white 

satin cap underneath was sup- 
plemented with an artificial 
rose in the front of the bon- 
net. The ladies at this time 
all talked about the arrange- 
ment of their " hind '' hair, 
which was often worn " a la 
Grecque," the other half into 
which the " hind '' hair was 
"Lavinia" chip hat for walking; divided, being dowu the back 

trimmed with white sarsenet . » . . . , , ^ 

ribbon, 1819. m lascmating rmglets ! J ane 

Austen, the novelist, wrote 
her sister Cassandra from London in 1811: 

I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant and 
spending all my money. . . . Miss Burton has made me a very 
pretty bonnet and now nothing can satisfy me but I must have 
a straw hat of the riding-hat shape. 

i^ot long before she had written: 

I am quite pleased with Martha and Mrs. Lefroy for wanting 
the pattern of our caps; but I am not so well pleased with your 
giving it to them. Some wish, some prevailing wish, is neces- 
sary to the animation of everybody's mind; and in gratifying 
this, you leave them to form some other which will not probably 
be half so innocent. . . . Flowers are very much worn, and fruit 
is still more the thing. ... I cannot help thinking that it is 
more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit. 
What do you think on that subject?* 

There were " conversation " or " cottage " bonnets, 
of straw or chip. The style was really a modified coal- 
scuttle ; " the most fashionable straw bonnets for the 

*0. F. Adams, " The Story of Jane Austen's Life," pp. 69-151. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 203 

promenade are the conversation cottage, which have 
have been much distinguished for their negligent neat- 
ness ! " The " mountain '' hat also enjoyed large pro- 
portions. In 1808, straw hats and bonnets were only 
used in walking or morning costume. In carriage or 
evening dress, the hair was worn with veils, flowers, 
lace handkerchiefs or similar light attire. 

Ann Alexander, an English Friend, who was 
in America in 1805, is said by the daughter of 
the Friend who was her hostess in this country, to 
have taken her bonnet to pieces in order to turn the 
silk, when, to the surprise of the American, the Eng- 
lish woman's plain bonnet was discovered to have had 
a foundation of straw. 

The " commode,'' already described, was a pon- 
derous headdress, with such a place in history and 
literature that its adventures would fill a volume. 
Its banishment took a special edict on the part of 
Queen Anne.* But the Quakeresses do not seem 
generally to have fallen a prey to its enchant- 
ments. With its departure it again became possi- 
ble to dress the hair low. During its reign hats, 
which began to appear, some of them in turban shape, 
had had no more connection with the head than the 
" chapeau bras " of the men. At one time hat trims 
only were worn to shade the eyes, a whole hat on such 
a structure being manifestly a work of supererogation ! 

But through it all the hood in some form still re- 
mained. A popular cap for indoors at this time was the 
" fly-cap," in shape like a butterfly, edged with garnets 
and brilliants. The ladies at home also wore the " cor- 

*The name commode does not appear to have been used in America. 



204 



THE QUAKER. 




nette," a little hood with long ends made of a strong 
gauze called " marli/' or even of baptiste. They were 
later the constant wear of the peasant women about and 
after 1730. In this class the hood neglige was without 
ends. The " bagnolette " was an outdoor protection, 
something on this order. In France 
it was the " capeline sans bavolet.'' * 
It was really the old coif of Louis 
XIV. 's time, worn on the back of the 
head, and without anything at nape 
of neck. The old cape worn by 
elderly ladies became the mantelet. 
This was for cold weather, while the 
mantilla was a summer garment worn 
like a long fichu, thrown over the 
head and knotted on the breast. The 
mantilla and mantle must not be con- 
founded. The latter was often a 
large furred pelisse, buttoned from top to bottom 
in front, and affording perfect protection. There 
were broad-brim straw hats in the early days of 
Queen Anne, and for holidays the high-crowned 
hat of beaver still had some vogue, f The straw hat 
came in as early as the reign of James 11. (1685 
to 1688), and the hoods for a short time were dis- 
carded, to be revived again under French influence 
in 1711. Pepys says: " They had pleasure in putting 
on straw hats, which are much worn in this coun- 
try." At this time there was a feeble return to sim- 
plicity, and one writer says: "The ladies have been 



" Cornette." 
Composed of tulle, 
quilling of blonde 
around face, bunch 
of flowers on top. 
Style is French, 
" simply elegant and 
becoming " ! 
October, 1816. 



* Quicherat. 

t Ashton, ** Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," p. 248. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 205 

moulting, and have cast great quantities of lace, rib- 
bons, and cambric." Swift writes to Stella: "May 
19th. 1711; There is a mighty increase of dirty wenches 
in straw hats since I knew London." * 

It is interesting to note that in America, as long as 
the negro women were slaves, they were forced by their 
mistresses to wear the bandanna head-handkerchief 
as the badge of their servitude. When the Civil War 
set them at liberty this detested badge was cast off, and 
the many tails and curious knots peculiar to the true 
African style appeared, as Mr. Bliss says, " the real in- 
heritance of ancestral taste in chignons, straight from 
Guinea ! " There were many names for the varieties 
of hood in England, for as many years, and the old bal- 
lads and broadsides have helped to preserve these. 
For instance, " Fine Phillis," printed in 1745, but 
much older in date, has the following: 

She's a fine lady. 

When she's got her things on; 
On the top of her head 

Is a fine bnrgogon — 
A crutch there on the side 

To show her off neat, 
And two little confidants 

To make it compleat. 

The bourgoigne was that part of the headdress near- 
est the head — the " crutch '' (cruche) and " confidants " 
were curls. The hoods were " shabbarons '' (chaperon) 
and " sorties " ; the latter, a walking hood. Cardinals 
and capuchins have been described. " Rayonnes '' were 
hoods pinned in a circle, like sunbeams. 

* Journal to Stella. 



206 THE QUAKER. 

The dress of Anne of Cleves, when brought to Eng- 
land to marry Henry the Eighth, is thus described as 
to the headdress: 

She had on her head a kail [caul] and over it a round bonet 
or cappe set ful of orient pearle of a very proper fassyion, and 
before that she had a cornet of black velvet and about her necke 
she had a partlet set full of riche stones which glistered all the 
felde.* 

The " pinched cap " seems to have been a favorite 
matter of allusion to characterize the Quaker women 
by many of the old contemporary writers. Tom 
Brown, who lived certainly until 1704, and who, of 
course, had little but derision for the Quakers, says: 
" What have we here ? Old Mother Shipton of the 
second edition, with amendments; a close black hood 
over a pinched coif, etc.'' The " Querpo hood " f worn 
chiefly by the Puritans and plainer people, was also a 
Quaker peculiarity after it was discarded by the world- 
ly. Ned Ward, in a dialogue between a termagant and 
her miserly husband, makes her say: 

No face of mine shall by my friends be viewed 

In Quaker's pinner and a Querpo hood. 

The first mention that Mrs. Earle finds of bonnets in 
any records of New England is in the year 1725, when 
two were sent to England in the wardrobe of Madame 
Usher. By 1743 they were popular, and the middle 
of the century saw bonnets of many shapes — " Sattin," 
'' Quilted/' " Kitty Eisher," " Quebeck," " Garrick," 

* Quoted by Repton, Archseologia, XXVII., p. 37. 

t" Querpo "was a corruption of the Spanish Cuerpo, signifying 
close fitting. An undress. The body " in querpo " — t. c, in body-cloth- 
ing— close. See Hudibras : 

" Exposed in querpo to their rage 
Without my arms & equipage." 



\±. 




The Calash. 

Inkimtediydj. Worn untW^aboui' 1830. 
Ftont an original phbtograph . 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 207 

*^ Prussian," *^ Eanelagh," and others. The^ were of 
" plain and masqueraded newest fashion crimson, blue, 
white and black." There is no hint of the shapes, un- 
fortunately. We are told of the Puritan women in a 
certain congregation, that " ye women may sometimes 
sleepe and none know by reason of their enormous bon- 
nets. Mr. White doth pleasantlie saye from ye pulpit 
hee doth seeme to be preaching to stacks of straw with 
men among them ! " In 1769, in Andover, it was 
" put to vote whether the Parish Disapprove of the 
Female sex sitting with their Hattes on in the Meeting 
House in time of Divine Service as being Indecent " 
(with a capital I !). The " Hattes " were ordered off, 
but with no more effect than if the meeting house had 
been a modern theatre ! 

The calash, invented by the Duchess of Bedford in 
1765 was so much more like a buggy-top, or covering to 
a gig, both in form and size, that it can hardly be 
termed a bonnet, except that to cover the head was its 
sole function. 

It was made of thin green silk shirred on strong lengths of 
rattan or whalebone placed two or three inches apart, which 
were drawn in at the neck; and it was sometimes, though sel- 
dom, finished with a narrow cape. It was extendible over the 
face like the top or hood of an old-fashioned chaise or calash, 
from which latter it doubtless received its name. It could be 
drawn out by narrow ribbons or bridles which were fastened to 
the edge at the top. The calash could also be pushed into a 
close gathered mass at the back of the head. Thus, standing well 
up from the head, it formed a good covering for the high-dressed 
and powdered coiffures of the date when they were fashionably 
worn — from 1765 throughout the century; and for the caps worn 
in the beginning of this century. They were frequently a foot 
and a half in diameter. . . . They were seen on the heads of old 



208 THE QUAKER, 

ladies in country towns in New England certainly until 1840 and 
possibly later. In England they were also worn until that date, 
as we learn from Mrs. Gaskell's " Cranford " and Thackeray's 
" Vanity Fair." * 

The '' punkin '' hood was the winter mate to the 
calash in E'ew England, quilted with rolls of wadding, 
and drawn tight between the rolls with strong cording. 
It was very heating to the head. 

The caps of the women in this country by the mid- 
dle of the eighteenth century were in great variety. 
^' Fly caps '' appear here also. ^^ Round ear'd caps " 
had no strings ; " strap caps '' had a band passing un- 
der the chin. A little boy, aged eight years, wrote to 
his Quaker grandmother: 

Burlington, 12 mo, 23, 1833. — Mother wears long-eared caps 
now, and I think they look better than the old ones. She has 
worn them a considerable time now, and I have got quite recon- 
ciled to the change. 

His mother at this time was about thirty-five. 

*^ Bugle fly-caps '' were worn in Pennsylvania in 
1760. Mob caps are described by Mrs. Earle as a 
" caul with two lappets,'' and as wr may learn from 
many old portraits, were much worn. The ^' mobs " 
were no doubt the streamers which gave the name to 
the cap, and their undue length proved a source of un- 
easiness to the Quakers. The mob cap is most familiar 
to us in the portraits of Martha Washington, and it is 
undoubtedly the English original of her cap which fur- 
nished the pattern for the familiar type of head dress 
worn by Elizabeth Fry and Amelia Opie. The milk- 
maids of London on a May-Day were a sight, in yellow 

• Alice Morse Earle, " Costume of Colonial Times," p. 72. 



.,<!'*" 





The Cap 



I. MartJia Washington, SiUivuette. 
II. Amelia Opie, lybg-iS^^. 

Engraved by Lightfoot, from the medallion done in Paris 
by David. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 209 

and red quilted petticoats, pink and blue gowns, mob 
caps with lace ends, and flat straw bats with lace lap- 
pets, named for Peg Woffington.* 

From this time on we find some form of the bat al- 
ways present. Tbe wide style of bair dressing per- 
mitted a lower bat or cap; and at one time fasbionable 
women wore countrified straw bats. Grosley (early 
George III.) says of Lord Byron's trial: " Many ladies 
bad no otber beaddress but a riband tied to tbeir bair, 
over wbicb tbey wore a flat bat adorned witb a variety 
of ornaments." Tbis bat bad a " great effect." " It 
affords tbe ladies wbo wear it tbat arcb roguisb air 
wbicb tbe winged bat gives to Mercury." f Close caps, 
ridiculed as " nigbt-caps," literally boodwinking tbe 
wearer, were born in 1Y73, and tbree styles of bair 
dressing are quoted for tbat year: ^' A 
slope bag witb no curls, tbe front toupee 
brougbt bigb and straight; a long bag 
witb about six curls," or " tbe bair 
straight witb about nine curls cross- 
ways." Small chip hats were added. But 
the universal cap, once worn by young 
as well as old, was going out; and by ^730^ 

June, 1Y95, at tbe Eoyal Birthday fes- 
tivities not a cap was to be seen. The last 
hood had disappeared ^ye or six years earlier, 
and tbe hat and bonnet had tbe field. We are 
told of " bewitching straw hats witb open brims tied 
under tbe chin, worn in summer; and straw bats so 

* Hill, " History of EngHsh Dress," Vol. I., p. 182. 
t Ibid., Vol. II., p. 50. 




210 



TEE QUAKER. 



round and close as to look like caps, with which dainty 

little white veils were worn half waj over the face." 

Bonnets had been enormous, the tremendous " poke " 

having come in with French fashions after the French 

war. This was the bonnet of which Moore wrote: 

That build of bonnet whose extent 
Should, like a doctrine of Dissent, 
Puzzle church-goers to let it in; — 
Nor half had reached the pitch sublime 
To which trim toques and berets climb; 
Leaving, like lofty Alps that throw 
O'er minor Alps their shadowy sway, 
Earth's humbler bonnets far below, 
To poke through life their fameless way. 




Parisian Promenade Hat. 1816. 



Bonnets had fallen back to more decent dimensions 
after the French revolution, and hats received a round 
form that justified their Parisian name of " chapeaux 
casques." * London still remained for a time the para- 



* " Le Cabinet des Modes " rejoicingly said, 
cent a s'^purer : le luxe tombe." 



Nos moeurs commen- 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



211 



dise of the " high head/' and ostrich feathers and 
plumes had yet a vogue. The bonnet, indeed, had 
hardly a fair chance, for the towering coiffures made it 




1776. 



not only unnecessary, but almost impossible. The 
Times, in 1794, says " The ladies' feathers are now 
generally carried in the sword-case at the back of the 
carriage." A little later came a paragraph as follows: 

There is to be seen on Queen Street a coach, on a new construc- 
tion. The ladies sit in a well, and see between the spokes of the 
wheels. With this contrivance, the fair proprietor is able to 
go g[uite dressed to her visits, her feathers being only a yard 
and a half high! 

With the entrance of the nineteenth century came a 
simpler coiffure, and white satin and black velvet hats 
were worn on the lowered hair. It was now the ladies' 
turn to wear hats indoors, and they danced and dined 
and appeared at functions in their hats, just as they car- 



212 ^^^ QUAKER. 

Tied white muffs for evening dress. A silver bear muff 
in 1799, in Philadelphia, cost $14.00, one of grey bear 
$19.00. 

Snuff-taking was not unusual among refined people. 
There are plenty of references to the old-fashioned 
Quaker women of the South indulging in a bed-time 
pipe, and we may be sure that the more fashionable 
" snuffed." In Puritan New England a clergyman 
held forth against mitts, calling them " wanton, open- 
worked gloves slit at ye thumbs and fingers for ye pur- 
pose of taking snuff ! " Dolly Madison, the favorite 
and adored of society in America, was an ardent snuff- 
taker. " You are aware that she snuffs, but in her 
/ hands the snuff-box seems a gracious implement with 
which to charm." 

All Paris wore hats indoors. Then came the for- 
midable turban, to which reference has already been 
made, destined later to become the cap. At this period 
even young girls wore caps; and up to 1845 ^^ day- 
caps," with ribbon ends as long as bonnet strings, and 
tied under the chin, were worn. As the styles seem 
always to have been calculated for elderly women, it 
may be fancied what an effect they had on a young 
face ! The bonnets of 1850 were round and flared wide 
in front, permitting the cap below to be seen. Then a 
frill was substituted for the cap, which then and there 
had its death blow, for the young, at least. England is 
still eminently the land of caps, so far as the older 
ladies are concerned. Miss Hill describes " black lace 
bonnets with a cape or curtain at the back, worn over a 
hood made of white lawn tied under the chin " — a fash- 
ion surviving in the bonnets with white frilled front 



A 8TUDY IN COSTUME. 213 

worn in the middle of the nineteenth century, and still 
occasionally met with among old-fashioned people. 

Fairholt has given ns a beautiful old Scotch version 
of " The Garment of Gude Ladies," belonging to the 
fifteenth century, which describes such a lady's head- 
dress as might be the Quaker ideal: 

Would my gude lady lufe me best 

And wark after my will, 
I suld ane garment gudliest 

Gar mak Mr body till.* 
Of h6 honour suld be hir hud,t 

Upon hir held to wear; 
Gamiest % with governance so good, 

Na demyng suld hir deir.§ 

It has seemed necessary thus to dwell upon the his- 
tory of the worldly bonnet, in order the better to fol- 
low the progress of that of the Quaker. We may thus 
trace the succession of the latter ^s changes. First came 
the plain hood, together with the pointed high hat sur- 
mounting a similar hood; the two styles almost con- 
temporary, and, at least with those not Quakers, often 
significant of class distinctions. Then came the adop- 
tion by degrees, and with many compunctions of con- 
science, of the hat and bonnet in varying form. The 
line of descent is quite evident from the time of the 
" capuchin " and " cardinal " or other form of hood, 
which among the worldly, served as an outdoor dress 
in the day of the " high-head," down to the end of the 

* Cause to be made for her. 

t Of high honor should be her hood. 

J Garnished. 

§ No opinion should dismay her — cause her to fear censure. Percy 
Society, XXVII., p. 59. 



214 TEE QUAKER. 

eighteenth century. The Quakers simply retained it 
through all the mutations of fashion, until the intro- 
duction of the bonnet, the flat hat having kept parallel 
with it until the evolution of the bonnet of Quakerism 
in the last century. Why the flat hat should have 
seemed more plain to the dear Friends, than the small 
and modest affair at first introduced as the " bonnet," 
it would puzzle us to determine. But the real bonnet 
was not accepted by the Friends without many misgiv- 
ings; and the women of Aberdeen, always careful of 
the letter of the law, thus cautioned their younger 
members in the year 1703: 

"As touching Bonnets — it is desired that a question 
be moved at the Quarterly Meeting whether any should 
be worn, yea or nay.'' And the meeting thus put it- 
self on record on this momentous question; that 
" though they might be lawful, it was not expedient to 
wear them ! " * 

Can anything be more delicious than this verdict ? 

Priscilla Hannah Gurney was one who long retained 
the old-fashioned black hood, which gave much char- 
acter to her appearance. So late as 1818, Katherine, 
daughter of Elizabeth Fry, remembered this ancient 
Quakeress relative, who had had great influence upon 
her famous mother. Priscilla Gurney was the daugh- 
ter of Joseph and Christiana Barclay. She is described 
as slight in build, and elegant in figure and manner, 
dressing in the hood, to which reference has been made, 
long after it had been discarded by others. It is prob- 
able that the plain Quaker bonnet has been an evolu- 

* Minutes of Aberdeen Monthly Meeting, 4 mo., 1703. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 



215 




18tli Century Flat Hat. 



tion from the original flat hat of beaver of the middle 
of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The bonnet one 
degree less plain, with 
a square crown, and 
gathers, instead of 
pleats, would seem to 
be the lineal descend- 
ant of the peculiar hat- 
like bonnet worn by 

the " Fair Quaker " of our engraving. It is prob- 
ably that against which Aberdeen took exception 
as " not expedient," and marks a transition period 
in bonnets in the world, as well as in the ranks 
of Quakerism. But the history of the flat hat is 
of great interest. Specimens of these still exist, 
and it is from one of these that our illustration 
is taken. The thought of putting on the worldly 
construction from Paris may have alarmed the plain 

Quakeress under her broad 
hat a century ago. But who 
could have foreseen, in the 
dip of the brim that she gave 
to her flat hat by tying its 
strings under her chin, the 
evolution of the present bon- 
net? The dip eventually be- 
came secured by permanent strings ; a soft crown or 
cape was added to the resulting cylinder, and the " crea- 
tion " was complete ! The illustrations are from 
contemporary articles, showing the evolution of the 




Bonnet of Martha, wife of Samuel 

Allinson, of Burlington, N. J. ; 

died 1823. No strings, one 

large box pleat in soft 

crown. 



216 TEE QUAKER. 

hat into the bonnet, and the change from the first 
soft crown fhat was tentatively added to the un- 
compromising five stiff pleats of the Quaker bonnet in 
its highest development. 

Watson, the annalist of Philadelphia, says: "The 
same old ladies whom we remember as wearers of the 
white aprons, wore also large white beaver hats, with 
scarcely the sign of a crown, and which was confined to 
the head by silk cords tied under the chin." A re- 
cent writer * tells the following tale, which was re- 
lated to him by an aged relative, to the effect that she 
remembered "a distinguished female preacher sitting 
in the ^ gallery ' of a country meeting house in summer, 
with one of these broad, flat, dish-like white beavers on 
her head, when a cock, flying in through the low, open 
window, behind the 'gallery,' and perhaps mistaking 
the hat for the head of a barrel, perched upon it and ut- 
tered a vigorous crow ! '' 

In the year 1786, Ann Warder, who came out at that 
date from London to join her husband at Philadelphia, 
went up into the country to attend the funeral of her 
old friend, Robert Valentine. She was asked, very 
much to her consternation, to sit in the " ministers' 
gallery,'' but made her escape. " I felt so conscious of 
being higher than I ought to be, intirely among Cloth 
Hats/' she wrote, " that I beg'd to return near the 
Door with the excuse it would be cooler." * Those 
beaver hats were to the Quaker of the eighteenth cen- 
tury what the plain bonnet, technically so called, has 

*E. M. Smith, " The Burlington Smiths," p. 157. 
t MS. Journal of Ann Warder, 1786-1789. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 217 

been to the nineteenth century Quaker. Yet one who 
should now appear in Arch Street Meeting, Philadel- 
phia, wearing that strange garb of other days would 
be looked at askance, and hardly admitted into full 
standing, any more than a certain Irish Friend, who 
not long since appeared, wearing the dress of William 
Penn. Indeed, George Fox and William Penn would 
themselves find a very dubious welcome, if that wel- 
come depended either on their dress or their methods ! 
A Friend in a Southern Quarterly Meeting in Caro- 
lina early in the nineteenth century sent up to Philadel- 
phia, then the center of Quaker fashion, for a black 
plain bonnet, laying aside her beaver hat. For this 
proceeding, and its evidence of what the Friends were 
pleased to regard as her hopeless worldliness, she was 
severely " dealt with '' by the officers of her meeting. 
There were heart burnings, we may be sure, over bon- 
nets then, even if they were not worldly, and an old 
family letter written by my grandmother in 1829, says: 

'' had a great deal to say on the inroads of 

fashion, etc., and spoke so particularly as to men- 
tion the young women having one kind of bonnet 
to wear in the streets, and another to meeting. 
This is very generally the case, I believe." We 
may be glad to think that the modern young Quak- 
eress has no such temptations to hypocrisy. The 
same writer adds, a short time later, " A plain young 
man is hardly to be found anywhere now, and 

Susan B- says plain hats are hardly even asked for 

now. I mean bonnets, for all are called hats here." 
This was in New York, in 1830. 



218 THE QUAKER. 

A painting of Gracechurch Street Meeting, London, 
about 1778, shows a large assemblage in a pillared 
ball, whose dignity and dimensions are quite imposing. 
It is lighted solely from the roof. The men sit on one 
side, the women on the other, both in rising seats and 
on the main floor. Some of the women wear the newly- 
introduced bonnet, like that of the " Fair Quaker,'' and 
others wear the flat beaver or " skimming-dish " hat, 
in some cases tied down over the ears; in others, not. A 
few of the older women wear hoods. Many of the men 
are in wigs, and all wear cocked hat, skirt-coat, and 
knee-breeches. All wear their hats, except the 
preacher, whose cocked hat hangs on a peg in the wall 
behind him. Groups of the " world's people " look 
down upon the worshiping Friends from the galleries 
above, each group apparently accompanied by a plain 
Friend who sits with them. This picture is very inter- 
esting, as showing the period of transition to the plain 
bonnet, and fully demonstrating the extent to which 
the cocked hat and wig were worn among the Quakers 
during the height of that fashion. It is worth noting 
that the seats all have the luxury of backs — not a com- 
mon thing by any means in the meetings of the day. 

A Dutch engraving entitled, ^'Assemblee des Quak- 
ers a Amsterdam — Un Quaker qui preche," shows a 
plain room lighted from a dome in the ceiling. The 
hard benches, without backs, are occupied by men in 
full skirted coats, wigs and cocked hats. They carry 
enormously long canes, fastened to the wrist by a cord. 
A few worldly men standing as spectators in the back- 
ground, wear swords. The hat-brims of two men 



Gracechm£^r.Stm€,t.^M^ -i. 

Original pamting in Devonshire Ttotise collection, London, 



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''The Bride." 

From the original in the ''^Atirora Borealis,^^ published 
at New Caatle-ufon-Tyne, i8jj. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 219 

Friends are not cocked. The women, plain and gay 
alike, wear hoods, and many of them crinoline. The 
date of the picture is much earlier than the preceding. 
A lovely picture of a young Quakeress, called " The 
Bride," published originally in the Aurora Borealis, 
a literary annual of ISTewcastle-upon-Tyne, in the year 
1833, shows a sweet young woman in cap and handker- 
chief, her shawl lightly thrown over her shoulders, and 
her plain bonnet lying on the table beside her. The 
cap is an exaggeration of that of Martha Washington, 
and the bonnet, it will be observed, has a soft crown. 
That worn by the Queen, in August, 1849, on the 
Royal Yacht, in Kingston Harbor, has a similar shape, 
except that it is probable that the Queen's was some- 
what stiffened in the crown. Mrs. Lucock, of Beau- 
mont-road, Plymouth, who is 84 years of age, is able to 
recall with undiminished pride and satisfaction the fact 
that she once made a bonnet for the late Queen in an 
early year of her reign. Mrs. Lucock was at the time 
a young woman employed in a London business which 
had the orders for the Royal bonnets, the size and shape 
of which gained for them the name of " coal-scuttles." 
It is an impressive lesson to one who thinks that the 
Quakers have cut their clothes by their rule of con- 
science, and always worn the same style of garment, to 
examine the cuts and modes in a Parisian fashion jour- 
nal of 1840-1849, called " Le Conseiller des Dames," 
from one of which our plate is taken. There our 
Friend may see the plain bonnet of to-day, exactly re- 
produced for the ladies of fashion, and worn by Queen 
Victoria, with only the ostrich plume to betoken any 



220 THE QUAKER. 

difference existing between Quaker and worldly. The 
young Quakeresses of the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury were given to wearing silk and satin bonnets of 
very delicate light colors, pearl gray and a rose pink 
being favorites. The quilled bonnets, and those with 
a plain front and gathered crown, both now adhered to 
in Philadelphia, and considered plain, may here be seen 
in their beginning, and that the modification for every 
bonnet has had its inspiration in Paris, there seems no 
possible doubt. It has been with the Quaker bonnet, as 
mth every other garment the Quaker has ever worn: — 
the cut has originated in that center of all ideas of fash- 
ion, and the abode of taste, Paris; while the expression 
of Quakerism lay simply in the absence of any super- 
fluous adornments. In this one idea lies the secret of 
Quaker dress. Anything that has tended to pervert 
this into a uniform, unchanging and arbitrary, has been 
directly counter to the true spirit of simplicity and 
meekness which characterized the early Friends. 

Sarah Dillwyn, the wife of the well-known Quaker 
preacher, George Dillwyn, wrote to her sisters in 
America, upon her arrival in London, early in the year 
1784: 

My G. D. said he did not wish me to look singular, and my 
bonnet was much so ... so out she went and bought some nice thin 
"mode" such as they wear, and made it presently herself; she 
would have me wear a cloak of hers with a hood, as the plainest 
of them do. . . . She had on a quilled round hat of gauze, white 
shade, and I think, a cream-coloured dress, but not so bedizened 
as I've seen some; — and a little round hoop. The girls did not 
look tawdry; . . . Neither of them answers George Fox's descrip- 
tion; he paints high!* 

* J. J. Smith, " Letters of the Hill Family," p. 247. 



Fashion Ptdie{, about i84g. 

From "Z^ Conseiller des Dames ^ Paris. 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 221 

Mary Holgate was a plain bonnet maker in Philadel- 
phia two generations ago. Her finger became injured 
through making the hard pleats in the bonnet crowns^ 
and she lost the use of her hand. This incident, to- 
gether with the retirement of the popular bonnet- 
maker, caused in that city a much greater use of bon- 
nets with the more easily made gathered crowns, sinc& 
which period these bonnets have received the sanction 
of the plainest wearers. This style of bonnet has been 
referred to as the " shun-the-cross." An aged 
Friend of the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
when a young girl, promised her father on his death-bed 
that she would never put on the stiff-pleated plain bon- 
net, then beginning to be worn, and considered very 
gay, as our extracts have abundantly shown. She kept 
h 3r word, and although she was a plain Friend and lived 
to the great age of ninety-four, she never flinched in her 
determination to keep her promise, although the flat 
hat that was the substitute made her very conspicuous^ 
at a period when the stiff-pleat had become correct for 
the most severe. Finally, after having made a solitary 
appearance at a certain western meeting for many 
years, wearing that conspicuous headdress, she deter- 
mined that she could still keep her promise to her 
father, and be less conspicuous, by wearing an uncon- 
ventional bonnet of her own invention. A green lin- 
ing which she put in it when well advanced in years 
rather surprised her friends; but she informed them 
that it was a " relief to her eyes in the sunshine.'' Her 
granddaughter had a green wool gown which she feared 
her grandmother might regard as too gay. When 



222 



THE QUAKER. 



questioned about it, her grandmother said, " l^o harm 
in wearing green and blue; the grass is green, and the 
sky is blue ! '' She died in 1857, having moved from 
the South to Ohio, then called " Northwest Territory," 
about 1803. Some interesting old Quaker bonnets may 
be seen in the collection of ancient garments at the 
Museum in ISTantucket, Massachusetts. A Quaker bon- 




net of black silk, of the date 1728, has small stiff pleats 
in the crown; while one of drab, dating from the Ke vo- 
lution, has much larger stiff pleats, showing the devel- 
opment of the present Philadelphia " plain '^ bonnet, 
known in ISTew England as the " Wilburite " bonnet. 
There is also in the same collection, one labeled " Eng- 
lish " bonnet, distinguished chiefly by a wider flare to 



Rainy Day Cover, 

From an original photograph. 



t^^I' 






A STUDY IN COSTUME. 223 

the front. The English bonnets seem always to have 
had a shorter front, and a wider flare at the face; in 
fact, to have had a much more sensible shape, if com- 
fort was to be considered at all, as it evidently was not 
in America! l^othing more dangerous could have 
been devised for an elderly person whose sight or hear- 
ing was somewhat defective than the long tunnel sides 
of the pasteboard front of a plain bonnet of the nine- 
teenth century. 

Ann Warder, whose journal has already been 
quoted, was remonstrated with by an intimate friend 
for wearing a " whalebone " bonnet, because of its 
greater worldliness than one of pasteboard, as the early 
plain bonnets were always called. We should be glad 
to know what the condemned bonnet was like. Quite 
probably the lining was of some bright color, and the 
^' casing " or " drawn " bonnet is no doubt its natural 
successor. Apropos of the " pasteboard " bonnets, we 
may read in Poulson^s Daily American Advertiser 
for Saturday, August 23d, 1828, among the Philadel- 
phia advertisements, the following notice : " Bonnet- 
boards — 50 groce of good quality at a low price, and a 
few groce of fine quality." They were for sale by 
James Y. Humphreys, at 86 South Front Street. 
Doubtless these were the foundations, for the fronts of 
both worldly and plain bonnets consisted of pasteboard 
forms, over which the silk or other covering was 
stretched, resulting in the " poke " or the " coal-scut- 
tle '' as might happen. The same interesting Warder 
Journal, which went in instalments to an English sister 
in London, has the following entry : 



224 T^^ QUAKER, 

September, 1788. [Ann Warder had no dread of the " heath- 
en " names of the months.] I put no cloak on this forenoon, but 
was obliged to afterward, not to look singular, for some had long 
ones lined with Baize down to there toes, but no hoods, instead 
of which a lay-down coular [collar] which would look very dis- 
agreeable to me but for the Cape to there Bonnets, hiding the 
neck. Black are worn more here than with us; — ^no Brown ex- 
cept Cloth. 

This was at Yearly Meeting time, then in the au- 
tumn, to prepare for which she had written just before : 

9mo. 22. — This forenoon I sat pretty close to my needle, in 
some degree preparing for Yearly Meeting, wishing to want noth- 
ing in the Cap or Apron way that week. 

The thieves that she mentions as having broken into 
the house during the previous week, made off, among 
other things, with " a new white Myrtle gown, a petti- 
coat, apron, boots, J's new white hat and two old ones/' 
The " Cape to there Bonnets, hiding the neck,'' was 
that of the " wagon " bonnet, so called from its resem- 
blance to the top of a "Jersey" wagon; they were 
usually of black silk, and had a pendant piece of the 
same from the back of the bonnet, covering the shoul- 
ders. The " wagon " bonnet antedated the '' coal- 
scuttle," still lingering among us. It was the style 
worn by Kebecca Jones, of Philadelphia, the friend of 
John Woolman. 

But the plain bonnet had its intricacies, and it is 
not for the stranger to learn them in a day. Like the 
stars, one bonnet differeth from another in glory. 
Eventually, modifications of the extreme conservative 
crept in; and we have the popular close bonnet, with 
fine gathers rather than pleats, and a shorter front, 
which allows itself a furtive bow under the square 



A 8TVDT IN COSTUME, 225 

crown, and wluch is found in the more modern shades 
of blacks and browns, rather than the original drabs 
and grays, called long ago by an irreverent young 
Friend, the " shun-the-cross " bonnet. It daily grows 
harder to discern social differences in congregations by 
means of the once infallible test of hats and bonnets. 
Even among the worldly, the distinction of class dress 




Bonnet from doll model of costume of Rebecca Jones, of Philadelphia ; 

died 1817. Dressed by " Sally Smith," of Burlington, N. J. Soft 

gathered crown, large cape with three points— otie on each 

shoulder and one in center of back. 

is nearly or quite obliterated. It is therefore a sur- 
prise to find a sect in Pennsylvania who " disown ^' at 
the present day for gaiety of attire — a thing not known 
now among Friends for many years.* 

The plain bonnet, too, has had its romance. In the 



* The Public Ledger for November 1, 1899, had the following remark- 
able notice : 

"bareed from church by hat 

" Miss May Oiler, of Waynesboro, . . . who lately returned from a trip 
to the Holy Land, has been expelled from the Antietam German Baptist 
Dunkard Church for discarding the plain bonnet for a pretty creation of 
the milliner's art. At a meeting of the church authorities in July, Miss 
Oiler was notified that she must return to the wearing of the bonnet, and 
that she would be given until October to put away her hat. . . . Although 
the defence was set up that the annual meeting had made the wearing of 
a hat or bonnet discretionary. Miss Oiler's expulsion was ordered by a 
large majority. . . . Miss Oiler is the daughter of the late Bishop Jacob 
F. Oiler." 



226 THE QUAKER. 

days when it concealed youth and beauty, and the 
broad-brim had to bend, in order to see within its 
depths, hearts were warm and faces gay, even in sober 
garb; and the old story was whispered just the same 
in the long tunnel of the bonnet. The little street 
urchins w^ere once said to have chased a beautiful Quak- 
eress some distance down the street of one of our great 
cities, in order to run around in front and peep up at 
the lovely laughing eyes that met their admiring 
glances. One young bride is said to have threatened to 
cut a slit in the side of her bonnet, in order to be able 
to see her new husband when driving beside him on 
their way to meeting ! Are we not to suppose that his 
sentiments might have been those of the Quaker friend 
of Wendell Phillips, as he sat quietly thinking to him- 
self: 

My love's like a red^ red rose 

That's newly blown in — the Sixth Month! 

Then, too, the crashing kiss of two full-fledged 
Quaker bonnets is something awe-inspiring to contem- 
plate. The bonnets collide at top speed; occasionally 
they have been known to telescope, when the rescue is 
effected by a third party. The usual result, however, is 
to send each bonnet far back on the head of the wearer, 
since the front projects some inches beyond the face 
— when a necessary pause for readjustment follows, 
infinitely funny to a spectator blest with a sense of 
humor. 

l^ow the Quaker philosophy of costume is essentially 
in the direction of plainness and moderation. But the 
study we have been making shows us how contrary to 



A STUDY IN COSTUME. 227 

the true spirit of Quakerism the technical bonnet, for 
instance, really is. Adopted in the days of decadence 
of spirituality, when life was easy, and time permitted 
infinite attention to details, the bonnet became lit- 
erally a snare, a fetish, a sort of class distinction, at one 
time almost as exclusive in its work as the mark on the 
forehead of the high caste Brahmin. That day is effec- 
tually past ; the modern Quakeress has now but the tra- 
dition to preserve of the outward shell, and must 
address herself to far greater moral problems. She 
must, nevertheless, like Charles Lamb, who loved the 
Quakers, endeavor to " live up to that bonnet.'' 

Politics and religion have alternately determined the 
style of women's headdress. In the days of Charles 
James Fox, the women of his way of thinking wore a 
fox tail in the hat or bonnet. To-day, as we pass along 
the street, the nun, the Quaker, the Dunkard, and the 
Salvation Army girl are the only types left where the 
doctrine of the wearer may be read at a glance. To 
the initiated, the Quaker bonnet once spoke volumes ; 
a glance sufficed to distinguish Beaconite, Wilburite, 
Maulite, Gurneyite, or Hicksite, and the dwellers in 
the Mesopotamia of the East. But time has leveled 
distinctions here as elsew^here ; and manifestations 
of doctrinal difference are sought to-day, with more 
regard for truth, in the heart rather than on the 
head. 

The venerable Margaret (Fell) Fox, eight years af- 
ter her husband's death, raised her voice in warning 
against legal conformity, seeing in the society for 
which she had done and suffered so much a tendency 



228 



THE QUAKER. 



altogether contrary to the spirituality of the Gospel. 

From her published epistles we extract the following: 

Legal ceremonies are far from Gospel freedom; let us beware of 
being guilty or having a hand in ordering or contriving what is 
contrary to Grospel freedom; for the Apostles would not have 
dominion over their faith, but be helpers of their faith. It is a 
dangerous thing to lead young Friends much into the observation 
of outward things, which may easily be done, for they can soon 
get into an outward garb to be all alike outwardly, but this will 
not make them true Christians. 

Epistle from M. Fox to Friends, 4 mo., 1698. 




" Wilburite." 



1856. 



"Gurneyite." 



INDEX 



Aberdeen 21, 140, 214 

Advices 4 

Alexander, Ann 203 

Amsterdam 218 

Angerstein 201 

Anne, Queen 10 

Apron 133-137 

"Aurora Borealis " 219 

Aylmer 81 

Bavolette 193 

Bodice 140 

Bolton, John 146 

Bonaparte, Prince 168 

Bourgoigne 205 

Brissot 159 

Brown, Moses 107 

Budd, Rachel 161 

Cadenette 101 

Calash 207 

Calico 169 

Callowhill, Hannah 130 

Camlet 41 

Cane 16, 17 

Canons and Institutions ^ . . 75 

Cap 182, 208, 209 

Cape 224 

Capuchin 124, 196, 213 

Cardinal 57, 196, 213 

Carpet 23 

Casing (Bonnet) 223 

Castor 59 

Cathcart, Lady 106 

Cavalier 10 

Chalkley, Thomas 139 

Chapeau Bras 66 

Charles 1 16, 102, 104, 112 

Charles 11 68, 73, 95 

Charlotte, Queen 130 

"Chronicle," London 33 

Classicism 167 

Claypoole, James 146 



Clergy 8, 94, 

Cleves, Anne of 

Clogs 153, 

Coach 

Coal-scuttle bonnet 

Coat, Skirt 

Cocked hat 6 

Collar 16, 36, 

Collins, Isaac 

Coloni&ts 39, 

Color 30, 31, 132, 133, 

Comb 

Commode 142, 

Coif 192, 

Congenies 

Conscience 

" Conseiller des Dames" 

Conservatism 

"Conversation" bonnet 

Cookworthy, William 71, 

Comette 

"Cottage" bonnet 

Cotton, John 

Cranmer , 

Crinoline . 

Cromwell, Elizabeth 

Cromwell, Oliver 



197 

206 

179 

98 

190 



117 
161 
106 
158 
145 
144 
193 
152 

54 

219 

3 

202 

79 
204 
202 
197 
9 
137 
199 

15 



Dartmouth 42, 107, 108 

Davenport, John 197 

Dickinson, Mary 158 

Dillwj'n, George 71 

Dillwyn, Sarah 137, 166, 220 

Dillwyn, William 99 

Doll 150, 151, 152 

Doublet 16, 39, 40, 41 

Dragoon 32 

" Drawn " bonnet 223 

Drinker, Elizabeth Ill, 164 

Drummond, May 134, 135 

DubHn 21, 109 

Dunkard 227 

Dutch 158 



230 



INDEX. 



Edwards, Jonathan 144 

Eliot, John 106 

Ellwood, Thomas .. 12, 19, 84, 86, 102 

Embroidery 29 

Emlyn, John 1, 93, 149 

Endicott, Governor 106, 197 

English bonnet 222 

Everett, John 103 

Extravagance 9 

Falbala ["furbelow"] 97 

Fan 153, 154 

Fashion "babies" . ; 150 

Feathers 211 

Fell, Margaret 124 

Fell, Sarah 125 

Felt .' 58, 59 

Fichu 140 

Flat cap 195 

Flat hat 214, 215 

Fothergill, Dr 71, 99 

Fox . ..10, 14, 16, 18, 68-70, 75, 76, 96 

Franks, Rebecca 164 

Fry, Elizabeth 4, 174, 184 

Gardens i 24 

Gay ...' 49 

Germans 94 

Gorget . 192 

Gracechurch 218 

Greaton [Father] 9 

Grellet, Stephen ...103, 151 

Gurney, Hannah 159 

Gurney, Joseph John 89 

Gurney, Samuel 89 

Gurneys 173-177 

Handkerchief . 128, 140 

Hanway, Jonas '. 49 

Headdress 213 

Headrail .....192 

Heart breaker 143 

Heels , 34 

Henrietta M£|ria 147 

Henry (Prince) 62 

Henry VHI. . 98, 206 

Hetherington, John 72 

Hogarth 20 

Holgate, Mary 221 

Hood. 104, 193, 195-6, 198, 203, 20.5, 214 

Hoop . 137 

Humphreys, James Y, . 223 



James 1 194 

James H 74, 198 

Jeflferson 39 

Jeff ersonian coat 39 

Jones, Owen 71 

Jones, Rebecca 151, 171, 224 

• Jonson, Ben 112 

Jordan, Richard 88 

Keith, Sir William 78 

Kevenhuller 65 

Kinsey, John 78 

Kirkbride, Jonathan 41 

Kneel 75 

Kossuth 67 

Lace 16 

Lamb 38 

Lampoon 25, 28 

Lappet 209 

Latey, Gilbert 20 

" Lavinia " chip hat . 202 

Lay, Benjamin 43 

Lay, Sarah 44 

Leather 17, 31 

Lettsom, Dr 71, 99 

Levite 166 

Limoges 151 

Lloyd, Thomas 158 

Lloyds 38 

Logan, Maria 158 

Louis XIV 34 

Lovelock 143 

Lower, Thomas 128 

Macy, Reuben 74 

Mandillions 40 

Mantelet 204 

Mantilla 204 

Marie Antoinette 150 

Mason, Martin 77 

Massachusetts 104 

Meade, William 78 

Mennonites . 11 

Methodist . ...\:^ 144 

Minever 195 

Mirror 63, 64 

Mitts 180 

Mode . 183 

Model . 150 

Montague 76 

Montero cap 84, 86, 87 

Mott, Richard 42 



INDEX. 



231 



Mouchoir 192 

Moustache 94 

Mucklow, William 76 

Mu£f 35, 212 

Mulliner, John 112 

Nantucket 43, 108 

Napoleon 101 

Nayler, James 9, 93 

Needham, Ann 82 

Negro 205 

Newlin, Nathaniel 49 

Nightgown 146 

Nithesdale, Earl of 200 

Nollekins 136 

Nonconformity 123 

Norris, Isaac 158 

Nugent 102 

Nuns 192 

Overbury, Sir Thomas 198 

Overcoat 42 

Overseers 22 

Pantaloons 37 

Pantelets 116 

Paris 190 

Parton, James 94 

Pasteboard 223 

Patten 179 

Patterson, Elizabeth 168 

Pattes 192 

Pembertons 71 

Penn, Hannah 71 

Penn, Thomas 71 

Penn, Sir W 62 

Penn, William 16, 67, 78, 158, 184, 195 

Pennsylvania 105 

Peprs 100, 102, 106, 149 

Periwig 97 

Perot, John 77 

Peter the Great 96 

Petition 79 

Petticoat 137 

Phelps, N 82 

Philadelphia 108, 110, 152, 159 

Physician 46-48 

Pilgrim 40, 74 

Pinched cap 206 

Pinners 153 

Plaid 131 

Plume 62, 63 



Points 17, 104 

Poke 209 

Poulson's Advertiser 223 

"Precisions" 103 

Presbyterian 28, 29, 76 

Proud, Robert 71 

"Punkin" hood 208 

Puritan 12, 29, 73-4, 

94, 104, 106, 119, 157, 197, 207 

Querpo 206 

Queue 66, 101 

Quilled bonnet 220 

Reel 131 

Reticule 166 

Revolution 163 

Richardson, Richard 114 

Richelieu 193 

Riding hat 199 

Riding hood 155, 200 

Rilston 141 

Rochefoucauld, de la 159 

Rock 131-2 



Safeguard 

Sandwich 

Savery, William 

Saxton 

Sewall, Judge 

Shackleton, Richard 

Shad 

Shattuck, Samuel 

Shawl 

Shepard, Hetty 

Shippen, Edward 

Shirt 

Shoe-strings 

"Short gown" 

" Shim-the-Cross " bonnet 

Sleeves 

Snuff 153, 

Springett, " Guli " 129, 

Starch 

Stays 150, 

Steeple hat 60, 

Steeple headdress 

Stiff pleat 

Stockings 

Stomacher 

Story, Thomas . ..13, 48, 87, 96, 
Straw 198, 203, 204, 



155 
107 
174 
98 
106 
137 



171 
106 



116 



221 
180 
212 
159 
116 
182 
199 
191 
190 
38 
138 
147 



232 



INDEX. 



Stuarts 10 

Stubbes 145, 149, 156 

Subscription hat 59 

Suffolk 102 

Sugar-scoop 190 

Sumner [Archbishop] 95 

Surtout 42 

Suspenders 48 

Swarthmoor 125 

Swift, Dean 67, 134, 205 

Sword 32, 63 

Taber, Thomas 107 

Talbot, Richard 48 

"Tatler," The 5 

Tea 23 

Testimony 89 

Tillotson, Archbishop 95 

Tobacco 24 

Toleration 7 

Tomkins, Mary 83 

Top hat 66, 74 

Toquet 192 

Trade 22 

Tradescant, John 194 

Trousers 36 

Trunk hose 37, 40 

Tub preacher 128, 194 

Tucker, John 107 

Turban 144, 201 

Turner, Anne 198 

Type 6, 184 

Umbrella 48, 49, 50 

Underclothing 168 



Vane, Sir Henry 70 

Verney, Sir R 50 

Victoria, Queen 219 

VioUet le Due 191 

Vizzard 156 

"Wagon" bonnet 224 

Wain, Nicholas 48 

Warder, Ann — 

47, 110, 155, 165, 178, 216, 223 

Washington, George 66, 101 

Washington, Martha 208 

Watson, John 216 

Weaver 132 

Wedding 161, 162 

Welsh 194 

Wesley, John 14 

Whalebone 223 

Wharton, Edward 83 

Whisk 126, 140 

Whitall, Ann 160 

Whitall, John M 34 

White, Rev. Mr 207 

Whitehead, George 76 

Wickes, Rev. George HI 

Wig 16, 33, 47, 95, 98 

" Wilburite " bonnet 222 

Williams, Rev. Mr 197 

Wilson, John 82 

Wimple 192, 193 

Witch 194 

Woolman, John 50-52 

York 141 



OCT 1958 



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LIBRARY 




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